We know that Facebook has been stepping up their game when it comes to allowing users to to upload native video directly to their Facebook News Feed. But now, it seems that Facebook video is finally getting a place to call its own.
Currently, the ability to post videos directly to your News Feed has been a strategy that has had a positive impact for Facebook, as users are watching over four billion videos a day on Facebook. Although that is an awesome feature, especially when you compare it to embedded video, most of the time, people would still go to YouTube as a place for people to actively watch video. Currently, the Google property is still the world’s top platform for video marketing.
An announcement was made today by Facebook that could potentially close the gap between themselves and YouTube. They are testing a dedicated hub for people to watch video on Facebook that will allow them to “discover, watch and share videos on Facebook that are relevant to them.” At this point, the test is rolling out first for a small number of people, giving them access to the video section via an icon at the bottom of the iPhone app, or from the “Favorites” section on the left hand side of the News Feed on the desktop version.
With this new feature, Facebook is going to populate the section with videos that have saved videos for later, videos from friends, Pages that they are following, as well as video from other publishers. Facebook is testing some other enhancements that will hopefully make it more likely that viewers will stick around and watch more videos.
One of these enhancements are “suggested videos,” which gives users a stream of other videos to watching after they’ve clicked on one from the News Feed. The test began this summer, and gave publishers a cut of ads that appeared within the stream. So far, it seems that Facebook is pleased with the initial results, and has rolled out the feature globally to most iPhone users. Facebook has begun testing the feature on the web. Regarding the Android platform, they are going to test the feature in the coming months.
Some of the other tests that Facebook is doing includes a pop-out video player, which allows people to watch a video while continuing to scroll through their news feed, as well as a “save for later” button on videos, meant to be a bookmark so that they can come back to the video later.
Check the video out by following the link to the Facebook video.
Currently, I was unable to try out the feature myself, as it wasn’t available on my iPhone app.