Facebook Testing Auto-Playing Videos On Mobile

Facebook has announced that it will begin testing an auto-playing video feature in the News Feed on mobile devices, something that is said to be surfacing "in the coming weeks." With the feature will come automatic video playing when one is scrolled to in the News Feed, much in the same way a video is automatically played on Vine.

For the time being, those who get the feature on their mobile app will see it applied to videos from personal users and from verified pages, as well as pages of bands and musicians. In the New Feed, the video feed will begin playing, but no audio will play. If one is interested in watching the video, the audio can be activated by tapping on it.

Of course, the first thought that comes to mind with this feature is will it be applied to advertisements? And the answer to that is both yes and no. Initially, as mentioned, it will be applied only to videos from personal accounts and such. Facebook also says that this is basically a test of sorts, and that it will "explore how to bring this to marketers in the future."

Facebook hasn't provided any sort of rough guideline for any of these changes, saying only that things will be expanded and increased over time as it sorts out the feature. Until you begin seeing it in your own app, you can get an idea of what to expect by checking out a sample video the social network has published in its newsroom.

SOURCE: Facebook