On February 14, Facebook announced the few changes it made to Facebook videos. If you’re an advertiser, social media marketer, or publisher who creates video ads or original video content, it’s important that you heed these changes. Here are the five changes you need to know.
Videos Play Automatically with Sound On
Facebook announced that, after testing this feature and receiving positive feedback from participants, it is slowly rolling out automatic play with sound on. With this new update, sound will fade in and out as you scroll over videos on your news feed. Fortunately, if you never want videos to automatically play with sound on, you can disable sound on by switching off “Videos In News Feed Start With Sound” on your settings.
Vertical Video
A larger preview of vertical videos on mobile news feeds are now available. This new update, to which participants responded positively during its testing stages, is available to both iOS and Android devices.
Watch and Scroll
The new watch-and-scroll feature allows you to minimize a video that’s playing while you continue scrolling down your news feed. The minimized video will appear as a picture-in-picture view, which will keep playing in the corner of your screen. You can drag the video to any corner of your screen and, if you own an Android device, you can continue watching the video even when you exit the Facebook app.
Facebook Video App for TV
The Facebook app will soon be available to set-top boxes, including Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung Smart TV. This TV app will contain videos you and your friends shared, as well as top live videos and videos suggested by Facebook based on your interests. With this app you can save videos to watch later or you can revisit videos you’ve shared, viewed, or uploaded.
