Facebook videos have been auto-playing for quite some time now, and with a lot of success. Both user generated or shared videos and advertisement videos are seen millions of times per day. These videos begin playing with no sound at this point, but that is about to change. Facebook has announced that they are going to be rolling out the change to make it so auto-play videos have sound by default. Users will then be able to change the settings manually to disable if they would like.
Dan Rose, a VP at Facebook, said in the announcement, “We think people are comfortable with it now.” Whether that is true or not, we’ll have to see.
“After testing sound on News Feed and hearing positive feedback, we’re slowly bringing it to more people. With this update, sound fades in and out as you scroll through videos in News Feed, bringing those videos to life,” Facebook said. However, if the phone is on silent mode, videos will not play with sound. Users can also disable the feature of autoplay in Settings.
They are also looking to expand the areas where users will be able to watch these videos. Facebook is pushing out and promoting apps on things like Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung smart TVs, and more.
Mr. Rose commented on this saying, “A lot of people when they’re watching video in the News Feed during the day will save it for later because they don’t have time to watch. Now it’s easy to watch on your TV if you want to do that.”
Another change that they are rolling out is to the formatting of the videos. Rather than cropping the videos that are made using vertical orientation, they will simply show it in that format. This is primarily going to be helpful for people watching on mobile phones.
