Facebook Trials Floating Videos on News Feed

Facebook is testing a new update which allows you to view videos whilst scrolling through the News Feed. This concept is supposed to improve multi-tasking capabilities and establish Facebook’s renewed focus on video playback. So how does it all work? Simply click on the square icon next to the full screen command and the video will wrap over your News Feed. Additionally, you can move the video around to make reading Status Updates much easier. However, the video is locked to the current webpage so navigating to someone’s profile or posting a comment will make the content disappear.

While the transitions are smooth and user-friendly, I’m not entirely convinced by its usefulness. Watching any type of video footage requires your full attention and glancing at a small window whilst reading texts seems an overly complex way to do things. Even more so, given the usually brief length of Facebook videos. Admittedly, I’m not fond of Facebook’s video integration and feel it clutters the UI. For instance, the auto-playback of videos on mute are quite obnoxious. I understand this can be disabled in user settings, but an opt-in process would have been the better choice

Do you ever watch videos whilst performing other tasks?

Thank you TheNextWeb for providing us with this information.