Facebook, the number one social network in the world with 1.86 billion active users is coming to television as it will soon release a standalone app for watching videos.
The new app will allow Facebook users to watch videos from their friends and their “liked” pages on TV, as well as watching the top live videos. Facebook also said that it will recommend videos based on ones you’ve already watched.
Facebook’s TV app will be available soon on the Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, and Samsung Smart TVs, while more devices will be added later.
Other interesting features of the app includes:
- Videos will play with the sound on by default in the News Feed, as long as your phone’s sound is on. If your phone is on silent, videos will still be muted until you tap into them. This change comes after Facebook tested videos with the sound on by default in recent months and received “positive feedback.”
- Vertical videos will automatically expand to fill the full screen, like they do on Snapchat. This is change is likely meant to encourage people to shoot and upload videos from their phones.
- Videos can keep playing in a little thumbnail at the bottom of your screen while you browse the News Feed. Facebook has already tested this feature with a subset of its users, but now it’s rolling out to everyone.
Facebook’s VP of Partnerships, Dan Rose, said: “A lot of people when they’re watching video in News Feed during the day will save it for later, because they don’t have time to watch,” he said. “Now it’s easy to watch on your TV if you want to do that. We want people to be able to consume content wherever they are – whether it’s on their phone, whether it’s on their computer — and TV is just another screen for that. But we’re a mobile-first company, so the products we build will always be oriented around the experience you have on a mobile device when you’re watching video.”
