Facebook has announced a video app that will bring it into competition with YouTube. The app will be available to people with Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV or a Samsung Smart TV, and will mean that Facebook videos will soon be available to be watched on television sets. The move reflects a recent shift to promote video on its platform, after a recent move to pay video content creators on Facebook, as well as increased advertising of its new Facebook Live broadcasting feature. However, it has not yet been announced how Facebook plans to monetise the new feature. As the company currently makes most of its revenue from advertising, if it plans to do the same with video and offer content for free, it could threaten subscription video services such as Netflix and Amazon. Meanwhile, Facebook also announced that videos on users' newsfeeds would now play audio on videos automatically. The change is set to happen before the end of 2017 after what it called “positive feedback” to the idea. Publishers will now no longer need to subtitle their video content, as has become a trend since most videos were watched but not listened to.
