It is totally clear that Facebook wants to be more and more present in our daily lives. It is always looking ways to improve its platform and give more tools to the users. Once again, it seems that it has found it. Facebook now allows users to watch their news feed videos on the big screen.
It is like the Google Chromecast application, where the users can play the videos they want to see on their TVs. For now, only iOS users will be able to try this new launching, and Android support is coming soon, though no specific date was given.
Videos and Facebook
People spend more than 100 million hours watching Facebook videos daily, making this a huge opportunity for the company. It has become more focused on videos, and they have found a way to bring them to the big screen so that users could do it in an easier way. An example of how videos are now a central part of the app is Facebook Live, which allows streaming videos live to the users.
The new Facebook Chromecast support can cast the videos from iOS or a web browser to an Apple TV or another AirPlay-enabled device. It will also possess some features similar to Facebook Live like real-time reactions, comments that stream across the screen and users can add their reaction on the app while watching the video. At the same time, they will be able to continue scrolling down their feed on their phones while the video is playing.
Facebook’s Competition
But Facebook is not the only platform or application that offers this and is not the first one to do so either. Youtube is its biggest competition so far. It gives users the same tools Facebook launched recently and had some other tools that it does not have. For example, Youtube has the option to create a video queue to watch as many videos as the users want sequentially. This is why Facebook is making this existent in their new technology. They want to embrace as many view platforms as they can.
Nicola Mendelson -Facebook´s president for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region- said on June that they are looking to expand themselves as wide as possible by working on making all their news feed watchable on video.
Source: MacWorld.