Facebook’s Matthew Henick Talks Social Entertainment

Facebook’s Matthew Henick delivered a MIPTV Media Mastermind keynote address in Cannes today about the “art and science of making entertainment” and addressing the opportunities for content creation and distribution on mobile.

Henick just joined the social-media platform from BuzzFeed a few weeks ago as head of content strategy and planning. He said we’re in the midst of an “unprecedented” period in the media industry “where there are two golden ages happening at once. It’s the proclaimed golden age of television, there are more series being made than ever before. And it’s the golden age of movie franchises. Disney and other studios are able to reliably release $150-million franchise movies pretty much every month and have a reasonable expectation that they’re going to turn a profit. It’s rare that both these things happen at the same time.”

He continued, “There’s more money for content than ever before. But the problem is that it’s very hard for new entrants in distribution to come up in these spaces.”

Henick said that a lot of the money being spent on content is going “to the most senior, experienced type of talent. So a lot of people are being left out by this.” Moreover, a lot of new formats and new audiences “are being left out.”

The Facebook exec went on to say that there’s more content creation happening globally than ever before across other mediums, outside of television and film. “None of this is making its way to television and film. It’s happening on the 2.4 billion smartphones in the world. This number is supposed to double in the next three to five years.”

Television, Henick noted, is a “closed creative system. It’s hard to break in as a new creator. Further, mobile is social. Television is not a social device, it’s a window. Phones are more than a window. Smartphones allow us to converge creative, distribution and technology. The next leap is going to be social entertainment.”

He said in the future, when content is being created, there will be two “scripts,” one for the show and one laying out “what your audience is going to be doing with your content. It also opens up the opportunity for constant engagement. You’re not confined to a programming schedule. And the consumption is active. It’s not a lean-back experience.”

In the traditional viewing experience, the more an audience member likes something, “the more solitary the experience becomes. Social content prioritizes the connection with each other, not just the connection to the content.”

When it comes to social content, production should be responsive to the audience. “Not everything has to be live, but you shouldn’t be shooting things nine months prior, getting them in the can and then putting them out there. You need the ability to course correct, to respond to the audience.”

Henick continued, “This is all about creating content specific to where your distribution is. And this changes everything. The pitch process becomes much different. You need to be able to take an idea and make it specific to the place you’re pitching it and you probably won’t be able to pitch it to 12 buyers at once. It also makes monetization more difficult. And how do you extend [the content] globally if you’re trying to window?”

Social entertainment “makes IP more valuable than ever before.” The challenge, he said, is windowing. “They’re not going to be determined by chronology and geography. If you post a video to YouTube and want it to perform, you have to make sure it goes to every country and once. So we should start thinking about funnels, not windows. You want as many people to see your content and still get compensated for it as possible. And then as you find segments of the audience that are more connected to it, you find different ways to draw more money from them.”