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Facebook acquires video tech startup QuickFire

Facebook is continuing with its efforts to build out its video platform, on Thursday confirming it’d acquired video infrastructure startup QuickFire Networks.

QuickFire says its technology “dramatically reduces the bandwidth needed to view video online without degrading video quality.”

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In a post announcing the acquisition, QuickFire CEO Craig Y. Lee said his company’s goal “has always been to provide a premium quality, immediate, bandwidth-friendly video experience to consumers.”

The purchase of QuickFire’s technology and talent will help Facebook to deliver better quality video for its platform, which currently sees more than a billion views a day. An increasingly important element of its service, video is helping to increase user engagement, which helps boost ad revenue, an area that’s proving massively lucrative for the company.

Facebook said recently that the number of videos posted by users jumped a massive 75 percent globally and 94 percent in the U.S. in the last 12 months, an indication of the growing importance of video on the platform.

Related: Zuckerberg says Facebook must ‘invest aggressively’

In a statement confirming the purchase, Facebook described video as an “essential” part of the social networking site’s experience, adding that it was “excited” to be bringing the QuickFire team on board as it works to deliver a high quality video experience to the 1.3 billion people who use the social network.

QuickFire’s team of 20 or so employees will be incorporated into Facebook, Lee said, adding that QuickFire’s business operation would be wound down.

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Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
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