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Facebook experiments with audio-auto play for mobile apps

Your news feed video streams might scream in the near future. Facebook is testing out auto-playing audio along with news feed videos -- keep the headphones handy!
By
August 23, 2016
360 in News Feed facebook

Warning: you might want to doing a quick sound check before browsing your Facebook news feed from your mobile device at work. Currently, the social network is testing out auto-audio to stream alongside its auto-play videos.

Facebook has seen a 66 percent rise in the average daily video views per user, the company told us. But about half of that total video consumption is spent viewing content with the sound off – or half is spent with the sound on, depending on your outlook. So Facebook is testing out auto-playing sound just to if its something people enjoy and will be “monitoring feedback closely.” For now, the feature is only being testing on Facebook’s mobile apps.

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Just as news feed videos auto play at you scroll to them and stop when you move past them, their audio stream will play and pause in the same manner. So if you can’t trust your friends to keep their post SFW, you’ll have to visit the mobile app’s Settings menu or toggle off sound on the videos themselves.

Arriving as Facebook continues its expansion of Live video, audio-auto play appears to be the social network’s latest effort to drive up video engagement, and the ad revenue it raises, to lure users away from the allure of YouTube and Twitch and other popular sites for streaming video.

So what do you think about having the option to liven up your news feed with auto-play audio? Are you just peachy with they way things are right now?