Facebook's efforts to build a library of high-end original videos are getting a shrug from some outlets that are reportedly sick of the way the company has treated them.
"Media companies are like serfs working Facebook's land," Jason Kint, chief executive officer of the industry trade group Digital Content Next, told Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg reported CNN – which currently has a strained relationship with Facebook – was a key partner in the social media platform's projects since 2014, including when Facebook began focusing on hosting live video.
But Facebook, in pitching to publishers like CNN to provide a regular stream of TV-quality original videos – content that will allow Facebook to compete with YouTube – retains control of all the ad sales, while publishers get only to share some of the revenue for the ads, Bloomberg reported.
"Facebook is about Facebook," Andrew Morse, general manager of CNN's digital operations, told Bloomberg.
"For them, these are experiments, but for the media companies looking to partner with significant commitments, it gets to be a bit of whiplash."
Unnamed news executives tell Bloomberg that Facebook's journalism initiatives have so far done little to improve their relationships with the company – and it remains less collaborative—and more focused on its own interests — than Apple News, Snapchat Discover, or Google Accelerated Mobile Pages.
"If you come to us and say, 'We want to help,' I've got lots of ideas," Suzi Watford, The Wall Street Journal's chief marketing officer, told Bloomberg.
But by the time Facebook offers to help with something, she told Bloomberg, it already has a plan and is not interested in further discussion.
The New York Times recently pulled out of Facebook's Instant Articles, as did The Guardian. Because those articles are hosted on Facebook directly instead of on the publishers' sites, they have not yielded many subscriptions, according to Bloomberg.
Facebook's latest video push will require even more resources, and for now the Times is willing to experiment with them, an unnamed source told Bloomberg.
Ben Lerer, CEO of online video machine Group Nine Media says while he is not satisfied by his deals with Facebook, he is optimistic they will improve.
Either way, he told Bloomberg, "whining and complaining that Facebook isn't making you money is probably not going to be the most successful approach to building a partnership with Facebook where they make you lots of money."
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