The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Autoplay Video Facebook

Facebook tests pop-out video that follows you along the newsfeed

Author

By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

September 3, 2015 | 3 min read

Facebook is testing pop-out videos designed to follow users throughout the newsfeed to encourage greater engagement times among users.

It is no secret that most web viewers have the attention span of a gnat (decreasingly so according to Microsoft research as multiscreen viewing gains prominence).To combat this, the social network quietly rolled out the pop-out video feature to a select number of users on the iOS app as a way of encouraging (or enforcing) video engagement rates.

The update adds a new button feature to videos, meaning that they users can get videos to follow them up and down the newsfeed. Screenshots circulated on social media with the Next Web being one of the first outlets to put the pieces together.

Next Web’s Matt Navarra tweeted screenshots of the pilot.

Although in the early stages, and as yet unconfirmed by Facebook, newsfeed tweaks such as autoplay, suggested or pop-out videos could help the firm build a video product to rival that of YouTube.

One of the major criticisms of Facebook's video offering however is that much of the content is often pulled from YouTube creator’s channels and repurposed without credit.

Just last month the firm clashed with YouTube vlogger Hank Green who accused the firm of ignoring copyright and “lying, cheating and stealing” in order to muster a foothold in the video advertising market.

Facebook rebuked Green’s claims stating it was working on ways to help creators identify and enforce the copyright on their videos.

Autoplay Video Facebook

More from Autoplay

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +