Facebook chases YouTube's crown acquiring Quickfire Networks video streaming firm
Facebook has acquired video start-up Quickfire Networks to capitalise upon the firm’s video compression expertise.
The purchase of the San Diego-based company specialising in compressing video - without quality loss - for an undisclosed sum will help Facebook go toe-to-toe with YouTube in its push to become the world's top video aggregation service.
Craig Lee, chief executive of Quickfire announced on the company website on Thursday (11 January): “QuickFire Networks was founded on the premise that the current network infrastructure is not sufficient to support the massive consumption of video that’s happening online without compromising on video quality.
“[We] solve this capacity problem via proprietary technology that dramatically reduces the bandwidth needed to view video online without degrading video quality.
Lee concluded: "Facebook has more than one billion video views on average every day and we’re thrilled to help deliver high quality video experiences to all the people who consume video on Facebook."
Facebook's video service experienced vast growth last year, revealing earlier this week that the amount of user-generated and branded content in news feeds worldwide more than tripled in 2014.
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