New Changes to Facebook Video on Mobile

Last week, Facebook announced changes to its mobile app focused on video, further showing how much they want to be THE online destination where people and brands host and promote the videos they create. 

• Sound in the News Feed: Sound will autoplay in News Feeds if the user's phone is NOT on silent. With this update, sound fades in and out as you scroll through videos in the News Feed, bringing those videos to life. While it's still important to make sure all videos either make sense without sound or have subtitles on Facebook, this is a really interesting change for the platform. Many have stated how this seems like a product update more focused on wooing advertisers than users, though Facebook claims positive feedback on tests have encouraged them to implement this feature.

• Vertical Videos Improved: It's no shock that vertical videos are a desired format for mobile devices. Now, a larger preview of vertical videos is available to everyone watching a vertical video on Facebook to make the experience even better on mobile devices. This is of course in support of Facebook Live style videos - but could also be relevant for pre-recorded videos as well.

• Watch and Scroll: Facebook recognized that sometimes you want to watch a video and also want to keep scrolling through your News Feed. It’s now possible to minimize the video you’re watching to a picture-in-picture view that keeps playing in the corner of your screen while you browse other stories in the News Feed. This might be hinting at Facebook’s desire to be a destination for longer videos, and it will be interesting to see if this increases the average length of videos watched on the platform.

These changes continue to make videos of all types more accessible within the News Feed, and provide more reason for marketers to make video an important part of their overall  strategy.