Remember Instant Articles on Facebook? Yes, the rich-media content format that loads really fast on your mobile devices. Well, Facebook is testing its video equivalent. Video that doesn’t use up your data plan.
Facebook wants to make sure you can consume as much content as possible, while at the same time going through the least amount of data possible. To help its users do so, it’s starting to test Instant Videos on its platform. What are Instant Videos? While Instant Articles are content formats that publishers have to publish in so they can load really fast on bad data connections, Instant Videos are downloaded and cached – then they are available to view later… for free.
Instant Videos – marked with a blue lightning bolt – are downloaded when your device is connected to Wi-Fi so you don’t need to use your data connection when you finally want to watch them. Clever, right? Yes, very. They will certainly help many more users consume more video on the platform, and will make both publishers and advertisers very happy too. Instant Videos are only available to a very small percentage of Android users at the moment.
TNW’s Director of Social Media, Matt Navarra shared a screenshot and TechCrunch reported the feature.
Facebook Instant Videos coming soon? ⚡️
h/t Devesh Logendran pic.twitter.com/rNZYkbeL2r
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) September 11, 2017
In any case, Facebook‘s goal is to get people to watch as much video as possible on the platform. It’s making sure the cost of data won’t be a problem in this.
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