Facebook has revealed it’s testing a dedicated video feed, which will allow users to watch videos on the platform without seeing other content from the friends and pages they follow.
The update to the site’s mobile app, which is currently being tested with a select group of users, is expected to roll out in the coming months. The feed will separate videos shared by friends and pages “liked”, as well as those that are trending on the platform. It will also suggest related videos, to keep users engrossed.
The feed is said to create a non-stop viewing platform for video content and Facebook have said it will help “people discover, watch and share videos on Facebook that are relevant to them”.
“A year or two from now, we think Facebook will be mostly video,” Ted Zagat, Facebook’s head of ad product said, speaking on a panel at Variety’s Entertainment and Technology Summit.
However, the integration of video in Facebook’s network is controversial. In an August blog post on Medium, Hank Green discussed the falsehood of Facebook views, stating:
“When Facebook says it has roughly the same number of views as YouTube, what they really mean is that they have roughly one-fifth of YouTube’s views, since they’re intentionally and blatantly over-counting to the detriment of everyone except them.”
The site has confirmed other video features are in the works, which include a suggested videos feed, a multitasking feature and a save button, to allow users to save a video to watch later.
In the same post, Hank went on to mention the issue of freebooting, where videos are re-uploaded to Facebook numerous times, resulting in copyright infringement that often isn’t dealt with until days after the upload, when the video has been viewed by numerous site users.
You can find out more about their new video experiences on the Facebook Newsroom.
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