Facebook has just inked a deal with Comcast to produce and distribute a new show called Facebook Diaries. The idea is that Facebook users would submit videos around a specific topic and then the best ones get selected to be shown on the show.
Users will be encouraged to submit videos around themes such as “who am I?” “heartbreak,” and “life during wartime,” Cutler said. The best ones will land in “Facebook Diaries.”
The show would be available both on the Internet and on TV through Comcast’s Video on Demand service – the first of its kind.
This is the lamest idea I’ve ever seen Facebook try. It’s painful to know that the entire premise is to consolidate 20 or 30 otherwise mundane YouTube clips into an ad-laced half hour long show. It’s strange that they’ve already planned a 10 episode season.
But it’s outright moronic that they decided to side-step YouTube! In a psychotic move, Facebook has chosen the Comcast sponsored video site Ziddio – A domain name that so badly resembling “Video with a Z”, that they had to buy Ziddeo.com just to make sure you don’t misspell it (which I did – twice). Its also slow, which is amazing for it being owned by Comcast. And lastly, its video player’s interface is plain terrible. Go ahead. Visit their site. Wait 10 seconds for it to load. Watch in horror as a really crappy clip starts to automatically play. Now try to change the volume. Be shocked at how bad a video player interface can be done.
Why would you produce online content only to have it hosted by a (crappy) no-name video hosting site? We already know if the show is even half decent, users will just post it up on YouTube within the hour anyway. But even worse, if the show is half-crappy, nobody will ever bother to see it.
Why would they do this? Perhaps they got blinded by the idea of being able to have their precious TV show appear on Comcast’s Video on Demand service. Whereas had it been a sponsored channel on YouTube, whose primary demographic is shared by Facebook, it would have been seen by virtually everybody on YouTube at least once (even if the show sucked).
Perhaps Google (Okurt) or YouTube is somehow seen as a competitor to Facebook. Maybe Google’s ads don’t pay well. Perhaps Zuckerberg just loves to smoke crack. Either way, this show already reeks of failure.