Facebook Acquires Video Tech Startup QuickFire Networks

In its continuing moves toward online video domination, Facebook has announced its acquisition of QuickFire Networks, a video processing and transcoding company that should help the social media network in delivering video more efficiently to its users.

Facebook’s importance in the online video world has been increasing exponentially in recent times, with the latest reports indicating that the number of video posts per person has grown by 75% globally over the past year. Clearly, the social media company views video as an essential element of its service. With the acquisition of QuickFire, Facebook may be able to take additional video viewing time and ad dollars away from its rivals, such as YouTube. Details of the financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

The San Diego-based QuickFire Networks makes proprietary technology that reduces the amount of bandwidth required to view video online without having a detrimental effect on its quality. Its transcoding service can compress videos to lower bit rates without degrading the quality, and can increase video quality without increasing the file size. This technology should help Facebook increase its share of the online video market even further, making it an even more attractive place for marketers and users to post their videos. With Facebook’s recent reports of over one billion video views per day, the company shows no signs of slowing down in its growth as a major player in the online video world.

“Video is an essential part of the Facebook experience,” wrote Facebook in a statement. “We are excited to bring QuickFire Networks on board as we continue delivering a high quality video experience to the over 1.3 billion people who use Facebook.”

QuickFire CEO Craig Lee indicated in the company’s announcement that key members of its roughly 20-employee team will be joining Facebook at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, as well as in Seattle.

“QuickFire Networks was founded on the premise that the current network infrastructure is not sufficient to support the massive consumption of video that’s happening online without compromising on video quality,” explained Lee. “Now we’re ready to take the next step in our growth. Facebook has more than one billion video views on average every day and we’re thrilled to help deliver high quality video experiences to all the people who consume video on Facebook.”

Much has been written about Facebook’s massive growth in video over the past year. Evan James, the head of North American Marketing for Socialbakers, explained the shift.

“A year ago, YouTube was the clear leader in terms of video quantity, nearly doubling the number of videos published on any other content network,” said James. “Starting in May, however, content marketers increasingly began uploading videos to Facebook directly, with a 50% increase from May through July. That increase has kept up – and now it appears marketers have made their choice.”

Facebook’s focus on video content has certainly been paying off, with increasing speculation about the potential for the company to soon surpass YouTube as the primary place for marketers to post their videos. With its latest acquisition of QuickFire and the expected implementation of its advanced video compression technology, Facebook’s video growth may become even more rapid in the coming period.