Facebook videos to autoplay with sound

Facebook videos – and ads – are about to become noisier as a result of some app updates the social media company announced today. Facebook based its new feature on the feedback it got from a handful of people who tested the feature months back. You can now watch vertical videos in full-screen, autoplay videos with sound, and watch picture-in-picture while scrolling down your News Feed.

Facebook has tried to quiet the calls for it to turn on the volume for its videos by default by claiming that mobile viewers simply aren’t interested in sound and adding ways for brands and publishers to insert subtitles into their videos.

Interestingly, the sound on the videos in feed will fade in and out when users scroll through them.

Facebook previously relied on promoting AirPlay from the iOS app as the best way to watch videos on the service using Apple TV. On Tuesday, two of the company’s managers outlined several changes created to make watching video on Facebook richer, more flexible and more engaging.

Prior to today’s update, videos on News Feed had played silently, and users have had to tap on a video to hear sound. As a followup to that initiative, at the end of January 2017, the social network announced that it was developing a special video app for Apple TV and other set top boxes.

The forthcoming app could serve Facebook in securing more advertising revenue out of the $70 billion television advertising market. The company recently introduced a video tab on its mobile app and will soon begin buying original shows to fill that tab with highly produced video. This is another major move in pushing video to the frontlines, a primary avenue for the social media giant.

He said that Facebook users often hoard videos for later viewing, and that the cache manages to stack up, with the user failing to find the right time to finish them all.

I admit I thought the idea of a Facebook smart TV app turned me off originally, even tweeting “Yuck” when the rumors first swirled. Videos will keep playing in a picture-in-picture window in the corner of your device’s screen.

Facebook says the standalone app will be released “soon”. Second, the company will now allow users to minimize the video they are watching, and keep scrolling through the News Feed.