Google doesn’t want to hear it, but Facebook has quickly become a formidable competitor to YouTube. After launching live video streaming, Facebook Moments, and the announcement of 360 degree video, Facebook is now testing a feed dedicated to just video.
This feed can be found on the iPhone app, but only a handful of people will be able to see it. If you’re one of the lucky few, you will find it in the middle of the five tabs at the bottom of the screen. It actually replaces Messenger.
This feed will be just like a traditional news feed in the sense that it scrolls vertically. The only difference is that it will consist of videos that were shared by your friends and the pages that you follow. It’s unclear when Facebook will roll this feature out to more users.
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Of course Facebook wants its users to watch more video so the company is also testing a couple of new features that will hopefully create more interest. A suggested videos feed will show videos similar to the current video being watched, as well as a few from advertisers. Users can scroll down from any full screen video to access it. Suggested videos has already been tested for sometime now, and is starting to roll out to most iPhone users now. It’s also being testing on the web and Android users should get a test in the “coming months.”
The social giant is also testing picture-in-picture and save features. The picture-in-picture feature allows users to shrink the currently played video to a small box that floats in the corner of the news feed, allowing users to scroll for more content while watching the video. The save feature is exactly what the name suggests … you can save a video for later viewing. These saved videos will also appear in the new videos feed for those that have it. Picture-in-picture and the saving feature are still being tested, and there is no official word on when they will be widely rolled out.
Facebook believes that video will be an intrical part of the news feed within a year or two. The two biggest reasons for this are the new live streaming tools similar to Periscope and the upcoming compatibility with 360-degree videos, which will likely get a huge push once the Oculus Rift launches next year. YouTube still has the largest user base, but Facebook appears to be putting a dent in that market share. Back in August, it was reported that Facebook already had 4 million daily video views.
