Technology
Facebook Tests a New Way to Show Video – and Make Money from it
This Friday, May 18, 2012, file photo shows Facebook’s headquarters behind flowers in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
(Computer World) – Facebook is preparing a new way to show videos on the social network and opening the door to a new source of advertising revenue at the same time.
The new feature, called Suggested Videos, will roll out first on iOS in the coming weeks and probably will come to other platforms like Android and the Web in the next few months.
It works like this: When users click on a video in their News Feed, a new area pops up with related videos from Facebook partners that users can also watch. Some of those videos will be advertisements and, when a user watches one of them, Facebook will share the advertising dollars with the other partners supplying the video.
If a user taps on a video of a basketball game recorded by a friend, for instance, the Suggested Videos feed might contain videos from the NBA along with advertisements. If the user watches an ad, Facebook will split the revenue from that advertisement with the NBA.
