Facebook paying Internet stars and others for live videos shouldn't surprise you

We’ve been hearing about how close attention is being given to the live broadcasting feature by Facebook. We also heard about it going as far as to pay celebrities to get them on the platform. Zuckerberg also spoke about putting in place the new fast-forward feature . A lot is happening in the live videos space and obviously because Facebook sees a lot of potential in it, and why not? A  Wall Street Journal report points out how Facebook is paying two dozen Internet stars including YouTube and Vine creators a hefty sum. The amount is no less than $2.2 million which is intended to encourage experimentation on Facebook Live. These Internet stars add to the list of celebrities and media companies that Facebook is reportedly paying to live stream on Facebook. The number goes to roughly 140 , and is said to be spending over 50 million to get them work on Facebook Live videos. While media companies are believed to be taking the larger chunk of the sum, a sizeable portion in the list is of Internet stars of YouTube and Vine and a $2.2 million sum is being allotted to getting them build videos. Individual contracts will vary, probably depending upon their popularity among other things. Needless to say, BuzzFeed is said to be the highest paid publisher that is likely to receive $3.05 million for broadcasting live in the time period between March 2016 and March 2017. Videos were the obvious next step for Facebook. And, we all saw that coming. Now, didn’t we? There has been an obvious shift in the pattern of the way users are consuming videos over main text or photos. It was earlier last year that Facebook had kept talking about how its video views are increasing by the day. The start of last year, it had claimed users watched over a billion clips each day. Facebook has been grappling with falling engagement on its platform. It has spent a good deal of time reminding users about a post added a few years ago on the same day, celebrating friendships and so on. Content production, and more likely original content production has been on its agenda for some time now. Facebook Live could help embrace the new video era and also bring some original content to users. However, quite contrary to that, some even blame its growing focus on videos for decline in engagement. Another reason, for its repeated efforts has been to outdo arch-rival Snapchat. Facebook has tried every trick in the trade to either own or build Snapchat-like platform, but fell flat on its face each time. Snapchat, now has users watching 10 billion videos per day , up from 8 billion in February this year. Now, it has fewer number of users compared to the social giant. This could be yet another reason why the company is ramping up its live videos production. Another reason could be its ambition to become the source of news, something Twitter is been regarded. In its recent alleged attempt to becoming a source for breaking news, the social site faced a lot of public ire . People rush to Twitter for news, and by bringing in the media companies, the social giant could become a live source for your news, maybe it is looking for something akin to your live TV.