The added emphasis on video isn’t surprising given how video is quickly becoming Facebook’s most shared type of content – the company has said that it expects the News Feed to consist mostly of video within a year or two.
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The world’s most popular social network is testing a dedicated spot for video, Will Cathcart, vice president of product management at Facebook, said Tuesday.
While it’s hard to say how successful Facebook will ultimately be in its video push, it’s likely to give YouTube the biggest fight it’s seen yet.
Expect to see more videos when you open up Facebook on your smartphone. The feature is accessed by tapping a “videos” icon at the bottom of the Facebook app on iPhone or in the “favorites” section on the left-hand side of News Feed on the Web. Now Facebook is stepping up its bid for the time viewers currently spend on YouTube and for the advertising dollars that come with it.
“While we’re still in the early days of testing, we’re pleased with initial results, which show that people who have suggested videos are discovering and watching more new videos”, the company writes. “We’ve now rolled out suggested videos to most people on iPhone globally, and are starting to test ads within the experience”.
This is something that Facebook is testing, giving users the option of watching videos in a floating window.
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In testing, this section contains a combination of videos the user has saved for later (another new feature is the ability to save clips), and videos from friends, Pages the user has subscribed to, or random suggested content from other video publishers.
