Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is gearing up to unveil an upgraded video player on Facebook, aiming to offer users a more seamless and captivating viewing journey.
The revamped video player integrates Reels, longer videos, and Live content into a unified full-screen interface, enhancing the overall viewing experience.
Initially debuting in the United States and Canada for iOS and Android devices, this feature will gradually roll out worldwide in the upcoming months.
A standout feature of the new video player is its vertical orientation, ensuring a consistent full-screen display for all videos, thereby eliminating the need to switch between horizontal and vertical formats, resulting in a smoother viewing experience.
Furthermore, the updated player incorporates enhanced video recommendations personalized to users’ preferences.
In addition to this, new controls within the video player offer users more flexibility in their viewing habits, including the ability to switch to landscape mode for horizontal videos and seamless navigation through the use of a slider, providing enhanced functionality to cater to various viewing preferences.
Beyond the player itself, users can anticipate more relevant video suggestions throughout their feeds and the Video Tab. With a focus on expanding Reels content, Facebook aims to meet the increasing demand for this favored format, offering creators additional avenues to reach broader audiences.
The improved video player on Facebook is poised to bolster Meta’s competitive stance against platforms like TikTok, while also opening up more monetization opportunities for creators, given the widespread preference for vertical video consumption.
Meta Utilizes Gen AI to Elevate User Experience
Meta has been harnessing the power of gen AI to enhance user experiences across its suite of applications, incorporating features such as AI stickers, AI-driven editing tools, and the advanced conversational assistant, Meta AI, among others, to drive user engagement.
Utilizing the capabilities of its large language model technology, which underpins Meta AI, Meta is offering English-language users in various markets AI-generated post-comment suggestions and community chat topic suggestions within groups.
Meta has introduced a feature called “reimagine” to Meta AI on Messenger and Instagram, enhancing the popular text-to-image generation feature known as “imagine” across its messaging platforms.
Furthermore, Meta has begun integrating Reels into Meta AI chats, exploring avenues to make Facebook more appealing and entertaining for users leveraging Meta AI.
In addition to Meta AI, the company is refining its other AI offerings based on user feedback, with plans to expand search capabilities across its AI platforms. Leveraging Microsoft’s Bing, Meta’s AIs such as Bru and Perry are now providing search results for sports-related queries, with plans to extend this feature to other AIs including Luiz, Coco, Lorena, Tamika, Izzy, and Jade.
In December 2023, Meta introduced Purple Llama, which encompasses tools and assessments for cybersecurity and input/output safeguards.
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