Facebook Videos Will Now Auto-Play With Sound

| Social media

Facebook is a force that just continues to grow and a lot of that is down to the massive spread of videos across the social network.

Due to this Facebook has told their investors that they are planning to aggressively monetise the success of video by having videos auto-play with sound.

Currently, videos on Facebook auto-play within their News Feed, but they play silently. The issue with this is that publishers know that their videos are being watched but in most cases not listened to.

Now Facebook plan to have sound enabled on your News Feed by default by the end of the year.

Facebook have been testing this out on a limited number of users for a short period and supposedly have received “positive feedback” and that the data shows that when something is thrust upon the user they are more likely to stick with it.

Facebook explained that “With this update, sound fades in and out as you scroll through videos in News Feed, bringing those videos to life”

And that "As people watch more video on phones, they’ve come to expect sound when the volume on their device is turned on.”

Obviously, you can avoid sudden noises coming from your phone by switching your phone onto silent mode, but for a more permanent fix you’ll need to switch off auto-playing sound completely in the Facebook app’s settings.

The news that Facebook will begin to auto-play sound on videos will likely be well received by publishers as it not only means their videos will be more attention grabbing with sound but also enable them to do away with subtitles which many publishers have reverted to as many users currently won’t be listening to their videos, just watching which means the use of subtitles has increased as a way to draw the user in.

However, this may not be that much of an issue in the future as Facebook has been playing with voice recognition software designed to automatically add subtitles to videos.

This announcement was only one of several Facebook plans for video, with the others being showing vertical videos in full, meaning they will appear larger within your News Feed and the ability to carry on watching videos while you scroll down the News Feed. 

Luke Stanley