Facebook Is Testing A New 'Watch Party' Feature For Groups

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Facebook has been putting a lot of effort into its live offerings and groups lately, and its latest tested “Watch Party” feature uses both. Get ready to be able to watch videos live and interact, with members of your Facebook group.

Fidji Simo, Facebook’s Vice president of product announced that the company is starting the test the new feature in only a few groups worldwide. The feature is called Watch Party, and it’s supposed to help members of a group to watch a video live and react to it at the same time. The videos used in a Watch Party are selected by the admins or moderators of a group, and the good news is that any video can be used from the platform – live or otherwise.

You may soon be able to watch videos together with other Facebook group members, and interact live

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The idea behind Watch Party is that Facebook wants to increase the engagement on Facebook Live videos, as they drive roughly six times more interactions than videos that are pre-recorded. Simo explained that the test is being launched on groups first, since there are over 1 billion people on groups at this point, and it can learn a lot form the experience; in order to launch more widely in the future.

Facebook Live has changed how people come together around video, and it has shown us how truly social video on Facebook…
Posted by Fidji Simo on Wednesday, January 17, 2018

In a recent Facebook post, Simo wrote: “this year we are thinking about how to bring what makes Facebook Live so special—the interactivity and the community—to more video experiences on Facebook … As Mark Zuckerberg said last week, Facebook has always been about personal connections and making it easier for people to interact with each other in meaningful ways.”

Facebook is looking for ways to add more interactivity and a sense of community to Live video.

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Facebook hopes that video on its platform will help create more positive experiences that bring people closer together. It’s all about inspiring human connection – not just consuming passively. We’ll see if it can make this happen.