If you hated autoplaying videos on Facebook, brace yourself for more nuisance. Facebook is reportedly working on a new option for all kinds of videos on its platform that would autoplay with sound on.
From live videos to 360 degree videos support, Facebook has of late given a lot of importance to videos on its platform. Now, the company is testing a new feature for videos on its platform wherein all kinds of videos be it live, ads or otherwise, would autoplay with sound turned on. There are two versions of the video autoplay tests that Facebook is conducting. In one version, the videos play automatically with sounds as a user scrolls to land on a video (of course, given that the phone is not set on silent mode), and in the other version, similar to Instagram, users have an option at the bottom right corner of the video to turn the sound off.
In both the versions, users were sent a pop-up notification briefing them about how to use the controls for an autoplay video. Also, like mentioned earlier, the videos autoplay with sound only if a user’s smartphone’s volume is up. So, if you are at a boring meeting, have put your phone on silent and scrolling through your Facebook page, you don’t have to worry about a video with sound suddenly playing. Moreover, Facebook, will also give users an option in Facebook Settings to turn the video sound to “always off.”
“We’re running a small test in News Feed where people can choose whether they want to watch videos with sound on from the start. For people in this test who do not want sound to play, they can switch it off in Settings or directly on the video itself,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable.
It is surprising that Facebook is testing such a feature when in its own research said that the most of its users are irked when mobile videos automatically play with sound. A post of Facebook business read, “Our research found that when feed-based mobile video ads play loudly when people aren’t expecting it, 80 percent react negatively, both toward the platform and the advertiser.” This research was aimed at advertisers and how they can best make videos that do not annoy a user.
Right now users can customize how the autoplay videos appear on their Newsfeed. Android users can go to app settings within the Facebook app, and choose Autoplay. Users can either choose to play when videos autoplay from either on mobile data and Wi-Fi connections, on Wi-Fi connections only or simply never autoplay videos. Also, Facebook automatically turns off the autoplay when your device’s battery is low.
Facebook has been incessantly working on making the videos on the platform more and more popular. Facebook recently this month also confirmed to BGR India that it is also experimenting with bringing commercial breaks to Live videos. Basically, like YouTube videos, Live videos on Facebook too will have those forced breaks of advertisements stuffed in all the videos. All live stream videos after five minutes, will have an advertisement of not more that 20 seconds inserted within it. How these advertisements work is, when a publisher in the program is sharing a live video, they will have the option to pause the broadcast to show a short ad break. The ads can be placed any time after a period of five minutes, and these ads will be around 20 seconds long.