The feature is being tested on a small percentage of people in India from Jully 11, and is expected to help videos reach users in countries with slow Internet speeds and costly data. Facebook’s move is similar to YouTube’s offline video download.
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According to an email spotted by TechCrunch (image above), the social media giant has quietly sent out a message to publishers, detailing the opportunities such a feature brings for their audience.
Facebook’s terms and conditions clearly state that all content uploaded by a user including those consisting of a persons’ Intellectual Property (IP) can be reposted, or re-used anywhere within the platform, while it acquires “a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License)”. According to the email, users will be able download videos to their Facebook app when online, and the same video can be watched later, online or offline.
The feature isn’t automatically enabled, and publishers who don’t want their content to be downloaded can opt out from the feature.
A facebook official said, “We’ve heard feedback that in markets like India, mobile data and internet connectivity is limited and many people struggle with poor video experiences”. Users can sync videos to the Facebook app over a WiFi connection to be viewed offline at their discretion.
Facebook will start testing the option to download videos offline in India from July 11, say reports.
YouTube on the other hand unveiled a workaround for saving videos offline through its mobile app in India in 2014. In India, YouTube’s offline feature has been around for sometime and lets users save some videos to watch later. It launched the stripped-down version of the social network app called Facebook Lite in 2015, which is now growing faster than the Facebook app.
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“People are coming online at a staggering rate in emerging markets and, in most cases, are doing so on mobile”.
