For business owners who have started using video content as a part of their marketing strategy, congratulations. Facebook has added a new recommendation feature for video content.
Now, this social media giant is testing a new, “related videos” feature that, just like YouTube and other video-based service providers, display related and popular videos after you finish watching one in your mobile News Feed.
Once a video is finished playing in your News Feed, you will have the option to re-watch that video, or select a different, related video from a sample provided by Facebook. However, the feature is only available to a small group of test users on iOS and Android devices.
Facebook confirmed the new feature, but told nothing on when it will be more widely available.
“This is a new feature we are testing on mobile to help people find more videos they might be interested in.”
This summer, video content has become Facebook’s primary focus. Last month, it altered its News Feed algorithm to bring higher-quality videos by analysing the average duration spent by users to watch each video. The goal of this ‘experiment’ is to identify what videos perform well, and more importantly, which users are avid video consumers. Recently, Facebook announced that users who regularly watch videos on the News Feed will see more videos. Again, the aim is to identify which users like videos, while simultaneously providing them more relevant contents.
Facebook focus on video content is quite reasonable. Facebook is in the starting point to implement in-feed video advertisements, and this type of information will help them to identify the portion of its user base most receptive to the video ads. Finding users who like to watch video contents will be an important point in giving advertisers the results they want. On the other hand, it also keeps users who don’t like videos from seeing content they aren’t interested in.
So far, the suggested videos seem to be user-generated. However, it just a matter of time when Facebook will allow publishers to put video ads on your timeline.