It’s no secret that Facebook’s video content has been doing incredibly well over the past few months, scoring higher ROI than YouTube and expanding with a greater mobile audience. Today, the social networking company explained how it will continue to increase its video services, particularly across mobile platforms.
VP of Product Management Will Cathcart wrote a detailed blog post that highlights the many new video features that will be coming to the service. The most prominent features include authentic and candid live videos, which have been supported by celebrities, in addition to picture-in-picture, which enables users to view smaller videos on their News Feed as they continue browsing posts.
Suggested Videos is currently being tested as an upcoming feature, which allows users to find multiple videos based on a subject found in the News Feed. Although it’s still in testing, results have been positive thus far, and could indicate that advertisers may be able to use it more extensively, as Star Wars and Discovery have done in the past.
As for the picture-in-picture feature, it ties in with the “floating video” option that Facebook introduced last July. “We all know that sometimes people want to watch a video, but they don’t have time or aren’t in a place where they can turn on sound,” states the Facebook blog post. “To make it easy to return to the videos you’re interested in, we’ve been testing a button that allows you to save a video to watch later, which can be accessed in your ‘Saved’ bookmark.”
There will also be a devoted section for videos on the mobile app, so that users can follow their friends and other video publishers with ease. This feature will also be rolled out to desktop users, since Facebook video is finding great exposure there.
Erik Schmitt, Social Strategist at Ayzenberg, states that As Facebook becomes more and more video focused we re likely to see more and more brands shift to short-form video content to keep users engaged. Having a solid video strategy is becoming increasingly important. As a result, the impact on users will be evident. This will change how people use Facebook and will likely keep them on the platform much longer.
The video above demonstrates some of these features in action, so be sure to check it out. It should definitely add a factor to Facebook’s continuing video success.
