Facebook started off as a social network in 2004, but now it has become much more than a simple social networking website. People use it for various purposes now. Some use it for gathering information, interacting with the groups and communities of the like-minded, staying in touch with friends and families, whereas some use it for staying updated with the latest happenings around the world.
All breaking news posts go viral on Facebook and that’s why many like me use it for staying updated with the latest news. Many also use it for entertainment purposes by watching funny videos, and checking out funny image trolls.
If you subscribe to some pages like BuzzFeed which post humorous videos regularly, then you can spend some quality time on Facebook watching those funny video clips.
Now, as we all know that Facebook is not just a video sharing website, it doesn’t provide an immersive video watching experience. And to make that better, Facebook is testing ‘Floating Videos’ in its News Feed.
This ‘Floating Video’ feature has already been rolled out to many users at this point of time. If all goes well, then it be rolled out to each and every Facebook user in near future.
What Can You Do With Floating Videos?
This ‘Floating Video’ feature is available only for desktop users as of now and allows the users to detach a video from the News Feed and move it anywhere in the same browser window where you have opened Facebook.com.
The window in which the video will be a played is a pretty small one, but it offers basic functions like play/pause, like, share, and close window.
Now, as the feature is currently in the test-phase even Facebook’s own mobile app doesn’t support it at the moment.
What’s Missing?
The fact that you can’t resize the playback window will put off quite a few users who love watching videos on Facebook. Also, ‘Floating Videos’ is currently limited to ‘News Feed’ section. If you navigate away from News Feed to any other URL on Facebook, then this floating windows will disappear.
This is the result of Facebook’s constant efforts to take on YouTube. And if the social networking giants gets it right, then it would not only result in more competition to the advertisers on YouTube but will also mean more revenue for the Facebook video publishers.
We would love to see how Facebook implements these ‘Floating Videos’ and bring them at par with those on YouTube. Stay tuned on Trak.in for more updates.
Image source: TNW
