Facebook news feed could be 'all video' in 5 years, VP Nicola Mendelsohn predicts

As Facebook continues to eagerly promote and grow the platform's video and live video offerings, Nicola Mendelsohn, vice president for Facebook in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), has predicted the social network could become "all video" within five years. Facebook has been seeing a "year-on-year decline of text (posts)", Mendelsohn said during Fortune's Most Powerful Women International Summit in London on 14 June, suggesting that the written word could be replaced by images and video on its platform within the next decade.

"If I was having a bet, it'd be video, video, video," Mendelsohn said, Fortune reports.

She also notes that video content, particularly their new live video feature, has been growing at a much faster pace than the company initially expected.

"The best way to tell stories in this world— where so much information is coming at us — actually is video," she said. "It commands so much information in a much quicker period so actually the trend helps us digest more of the information in a quicker way."

However, she said Facebook will not eliminate text completely, saying "you'll have to write for the video".

Since the launch of Facebook Live in 2015 to take on rivals such as Periscope and Meerkat, the streaming platform has sky-rocketed in popularity with numerous live videos garnering millions of views in a single day, from the exploding watermelon to the Chewbacca Mom video.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also reportedly been "obsessed" with making Facebook Live a success.

The company has introduced several new features and updates recently to promote Facebook as a go-to live video platform, including allowing users to leave videos as comments on posts, pushing live broadcasts to the top of its News Feed and paying a few media companies, such as Buzzfeed, to create original, live streaming content. In a March blog post, the company announced that its algorithm would favour live video over normal video content.

According to Mendelsohn, Facebook's daily video views have shot up from one billion to eight billion over a year with users watching an average of 100 million hours of video on mobile every day. She added that "engagement is much higher" for live videos as compared to pre-recorded video.

When a Quartz writer asked the executive whether the social media giant has been pushing video content over text, Mendelsohn said the shift has been user-driven and organic.