Facebook Is Testing New Video Features For Pages

In Facebook’s continuing developments in the online video world, the social media giant has just released a new design for the Video section of Facebook Pages, making them look and feel a lot more like YouTube Channels.

Facebook has confirmed that it is testing the new design and features with a handful of Pages, with plans to roll it out to all Pages in the coming weeks. Soon, all businesses will be able to choose a featured video that will be displayed extra-large with a live comment feed at the top of their Page. Additionally, Page owners will be able to create playlists of their videos.

The social media giant is altering its video functionality at the same time as it pushes on the monetization front overall. The company recently struck a deal with the NFL to show football game highlights on Facebook with post-roll ads for Verizon, with ad revenue to be split between the football league and the social media company. It appears that Facebook is trying to make its home for businesses feel less like a newspaper that comes to you and more like TV channels that you choose to turn on.

The social media company is trying to make its Pages into destinations that businesses link to and that people voluntarily visit. To achieve this goal, Facebook has given local business Pages contact details, reviews and OpenTable integrations like Yelp. It’s opened communications channels and curation of evergreen content to compete with Google indexed websites. Now, with its latest video developments, the social media company is attempting to compete with YouTube and television.

Pages will be changed to the new design automatically. If a Page owner doesn’t select a featured video or make playlists, their videos will simply be displayed in a chronological list, with titles, length, Like counts and view counts visible.

Facebook has been making significant changes to its video offerings over the past year, and this latest development seems like a natural part of that progression. Facebook made videos auto-play and followed that up by introducing auto-play video ads. The company also increased the amount of videos that users see in the News Feed, and it had a big effect. From May to July of this year, video views per month increased by 50%, and Facebook reached an impressive 1 billion views per day by September.

Although Facebook’s video options have grown exponentially in recent times, the social media company will need to continue developing if it wants to further increase its control in the online video world. Many users still complain about the lack of video creation tools that are available on the network, with no ability for users to utilize tap-and-hold-to-capture, multi-shot recordings, editing features, filters or stabilization functionality, whereas these tools are available on Vine, Snapchat, and its own Instagram. Considering the high level of focus that Facebook has been putting on video over the past year, an expansion of its video creation tools is likely to be on the way in the coming period.