Those users will find that any and all videos in their News Feed will start playing automatically as they scroll by. But that’s precisely what Facebook is going for in its latest test, where it starts autoplaying video clips on your feed with sound.
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Another group in the same market will only get autoplay videos and they will have to turn the sound on themselves by tapping on an icon which will be located at the bottom right of the video.
Because as you scroll through your news feed, those videos that automatically, but silently, play may soon have sound.
At the moment, this new Facebook experiment is only live for a limited number of users from Australia and there are no plans to extend or expand this “feature” in the near future.
Those included in this trial “can choose whether they want to watch videos with sound on from the start”, a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable.
But none of this works if users won’t accept self-starting videos, which is why Facebook has been very careful about the way it has integrated them into its service.
As the report notes, Facebook is just testing this with a “small” subset of mobile users in Australia at this point. There are many who might like the feature, as it cuts down the effort required to click a video to open and then wait for it to load. The reason behind this is that it adds to the consumption of cellular data, and even increases background processes, which leads to the application draining more battery on their devices.
Video producers and advertisers who’ve wanted to partake in Facebook’s video push have learned to make video specifically for the platform – stuff that can grab your attention immediately, and without sound.
Earlier, the auto play feature allowed users to watch videos easily on the go, no matter where they were, without the need of using their headphones as there was no audio. Facebook says that both sets of users will have the option of switching off the feature in Settings.
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Here’s to hoping autoplay sound begins and ends with this test.
