Facebook is definitely the biggest social network out there, and it is trying extensively to improve its offering to users, given that a large portion of them connect using their smartphones.
The company is planning to add vertical videos to its mobile News Feed, almost immediately after testing autoplay audio on videos. Facebook has started showing a larger portion of each vertical video in the News Feed for Android and iOS devices. Until now, vertical videos were cropped to squares when they appeared in the News Feed, and users had to click on them to see the vertical version. With the new feature, formatted videos, including ads and live streams, will automatically appear as vertical videos on iOS and Android phones. Snapchat and Instagram have already integrated this feature into their apps, and it’s not uncommon for social networks to take inspiration from others, especially when it comes to adding new goodies to their apps or even their web versions.
The new feature will also benefit advertisers and publishers in a big way, as it has been shown that people spend more time watching vertical videos with sound, which means advertisers will have a better chance of getting their message across to users. An update will be pushed to the Android and iOS Facebook apps to facilitate the introduction of this feature.
