Facebook Turns on the TV

Many of us tap into Facebook with our computers and smartphones. And now the company wants to make it easier for us to tune into Facebook on our televisions as well. That’s already possible via Google’s Chromecast. And now the company plans to introduce a Facebook video app for Apple (News - Alert) TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung Smart TVs. It will allow friends to share and watch videos, and get video recommendations based on their interests. But Facebook apparently hopes to use this as a hook to get its members to use the social media platform to watch episodic video. This is just one indicator of Facebook’s recent video ambitions. The company also recently launched Facebook Live. And CEO Mark Zuckerberg (News - Alert) spoke a lot about making Facebook a video-first company during the organization’s November earnings call. Since then, he’s hired on a former MTV executive to create original content.

Mobile Video to Lead by 2012

By 2021, 5.5 billion people are expected to be using mobile phones. That means more people in the world will use mobile phones than bank accounts, running water, or landline connections, according to the latest Visual Network Index from Cisco (News - Alert). The VNI also suggests that 4G will support 58 percent of total mobile connections by 2021 – up from 26 percent in 2016 – and will account for 79 percent of total mobile data traffic. Measurable 5G impact, it says, likely will begin by 2020. And, Cisco says, mobile video will have the highest growth rate of any mobile application category and will represent 78 percent of all mobile traffic by 2021.

CenturyLink to Add OTT Video Offering

CenturyLink hopes to offset declines in its residential business by delivering over-the-top video. These video services, reports indicate, will be able to be support on connections of as low at 10 megabits per second. The company has been trialing OTT video services in four markets and plans to launch them commercially in select markets shortly.

Reveal Enables Enterprise Video

Maven Wave Partners LLC recently teamed up with Google (News - Alert) Cloud to launch a new video platform for businesses. Called Reveal, it delivers a YouTube-like experience to organizations. “The use of video in the enterprise has significantly lagged in comparison to the consumer market. We all use YouTube (News - Alert) in our daily lives to learn and communicate, but we rarely use it at work. Maven Wave saw the opportunity to address that gap. Reveal allows companies to bring video to everyone in the workplace while providing control over the video content,” says Brad Foster, Google Cloud Practice Lead at Maven Wave.