Facebook Begins Offline Video Feature Test in India
BENGALURU: Following in the footsteps of Google’s YouTube, Facebook, since early July, has been piloting a new feature allowing users to save videos to watch offline.
India has been chosen as the target market for this particular feature due to low connectivity and internet speeds throughout the country. As it is in the initial testing stage, this option has been provided only to selected, privileged users and publishers.
The said publishers will also be given the option whether or not to make a particular video available for download or not. Facebook will only allow original videos posted on personal accounts and its pages to be downloaded. Also, as a measure to protect the copyright of the content, Facebook has ensured that the saved video can be watched only on the Facebook application.
With a population of over 1.25 billion, with poor internet connectivity, India is the best playground for the company to test such a feature. With over 500 million mobile users to have some kind of internet connectivity by 2017, this feature, will catapult Facebook’s business Northward, increasing its revenue manifold.
Facebook hopes to be a direct rival to YouTube in this space. Publishers across the world are going all out to do more videos on Facebook: from live to quick 2 minute videos to share with users. And if this feature is a success, with an average of 1.65 billion users, there is every possibility that Facebook might be able to outclass YouTube and take over as the leader of global video sharing.
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