Nas Daily Posted His Last FB Video & It Could Have Been His Worst Video

2019-01-06 , 11:09 am

If you’ve not seen at least one Nas Daily video, you either don’t have a Facebook account or you have a life (good for you!).

For the uninitiated, Nas Daily is basically a travel vlog, with each video lasting for one minute and containing a subtle social message. He gained more popularity when he was in Singapore last year and made a number of videos about our tiny island, praising us like we’re living in utopia.

Like him or hate him, you can’t deny his commitment to his goal: when he first started, he made a promise to make one video per day for 1,000 days, and since then, he has not missed a day. As he travelled around the world for the last three years or so, he has become quite a sensation in each country he visited.

To some, watching his video has become a daily routine, so as his journey comes to an end, we were expecting something big for his last video: kind of like any TV drama’s season finale.

Given that he’s always screaming, jumping and running, you’d have thought that he’s going to, maybe, do a recap of all his videos? Thank every of his “Top Fans”? Put himself on a drone and fly around the world?

Or even better, visit Mars with Elon Musk since he’s conquered the world?

Well, no.

I was one of the many who was anticipating his final video, and it blew my mind.

Because it’s like House of Cards: the season finale looks like a last-minute video done just to end the entire series.

But of course, for fans of Nas Daily, please don’t throw any rotten eggs at me yet. Read on.

Nas Daily’s Journey

Nas Daily, hosted by Harvard graduate Nuseir Yassin, wasn’t an overnight success: it was only 270 days into Yassin’s trip that he was in Thailand where he filmed a video dubbed ‘I am feeling cheap in Thailand’ that he finally experienced success.

It went viral, getting over 29 million views. And completely wrecked the Internet in the process.

From there on out, Yassin’s success was pretty much set in stone, with every video he made going viral.

So, What’s the Last Video About?

Here, you can take a look here:

His girlfriend actually took a behind-the-scene footage of him and he went apeshit after realizing the number of comments and likes that occurred after it went live.

I’m his fan but honestly, despite seeing how tearful the comments were, I can’t help but to be disappointed. I mean, this is the guy who gets millions of views for his videos, and in his last video, he merely just said goodbye?

Well. To each his own.

End of Chapter 1

According to Yassin himself, he’s going to take a vacation for a week and is starting a video-making company in San Francisco.

And he’s going to post more on Instagram instead.

Apparently, if you’re in this industry, you’d know that this direction doesn’t just make sense: it’s a necessary step for survival.

Facebook’s “Middle Finger” to Publishers

Lest you’re not aware, 2018 hasn’t been a good year for Facebook.

Other than countless privacy scandals, people have even dug into internal emails sent by Facebook senior executives and realized that the things they mentioned to the media has just been about the optics: their primary objective is profit, profit and profit, and that’s understandable. They’re a company after all.

And 2018 hasn’t been a good year for publishers or businesses that rely on Facebook for content distribution, too. Other than reducing the organic reach for all Pages, Facebook focuses on getting “meaningful engagements” from users instead of getting them to passively consume contents.

This led to many Facebook-driven businesses (some even creating contents just for Facebook) either closing down or laying off a number of employees. Also, many businesses that invested heavily in short viral videos suddenly realized their video team has become redundant, and they either lay them off or make longer videos (you’ll learn soon on why longer videos work).

Any sane business that think long-term has known that it’ll be suicide to depend on Facebook for distribution.

So for Nas Daily to “exit” Facebook and focus on Instagram, it makes perfect sense.

Longer Videos is what Facebook Wants

And did you notice that Nas Daily intends to make longer videos?

You see, unless a video is more than three minutes, Facebook doesn’t allow publishers to include an ad. In other words, Nas Daily hasn’t been making a single cent from his one-minute video—and let’s face it, every company needs to make money.

While Nas Daily’s objective might not be about profit, it certain helps if they make longer videos so that ads can sustain their daily operating expenses, because come on: everyone needs to eat, including Yassin. See how thin he is?

Whatever it is, all the best for him: it’s been a long journey and I bet it’s not the last of him.

That’s a few minutes, and see you tomorrow.