Facebook to roll out app to watch videos on Smart TVs

Facebook is taking one step forward to make its platform and apps, a go-to place for the content creators to share videos.

The social networking giant would be launching an app that allows the users to watch Facebook user-generated videos on a bigger screen, specifically, Apple TV, Amazon's Fire TV and Samsung's Smart TVs.

Announcing the new way to watch Facebook videos, Dana Sittler Product Manager, and Alex Li, Engineering Manager wrote in a blog post, "With the app, you can watch videos shared by friends or Pages you follow, top live videos from around the world, and recommended videos based on your interests. You can also catch up on videos you’ve saved to watch later, as well as revisit videos you’ve watched, shared or uploaded."

Facebook says its new video player will “roll out soon.”

Dan Rose, Facebook’s VP of partnerships announced the move to connected TVs at CODE Media today. He also said that the drive to make Facebook a platform that engaged video publishers began way back with the appearance of auto-play video ads in the news feed.

The latest development puts Facebook in direct competition with the Google-owned YouTube. However, unlike YouTube, Facebook is yet to provide monetization tools and pay creators for their work and provide tools for licensing the content to help them fight piracy.

Regarding revenue, analysts are expecting the streaming apps to bring a new revenue stream for the music labels. Facebook's current user base is 1.2 billion daily users, and it's only growing, and "making music more accessible on the platform could be a new promotional stream for artists."

Apart from the apps, Facebook has also launched new features to boost its video content. Facebook is bringing auto-sound features, allowing users to watch videos without pushing the volume button.

Facebook wrote, "If your phone is set to silent, videos will not play with sound. If you never want videos to play with sound, you can disable this feature by switching off “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound” in Settings. We’ll also be showing in-product messages to tell people about the new sound on experience and controls."

Facebook is also improving vertical video playback and bringing picture-in-picture view mode for users, who want to scroll down the newsfeed as well as the watch the video, together. As per Facebook, Android users will be able to experience PIP even when Facebook app is closed, but the company did not mention iPad support where iOS also supports PIP.