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Goodbye, Facebook Profile Pics – Hello, Profile Videos

Facebook has just announced the coolest thing to happen to your profile since the Cover Photo. Soon, you’ll have the ability to set a seven-second looping video as your profile pic. (Don’t...
Goodbye, Facebook Profile Pics – Hello, Profile Videos
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Facebook has just announced the coolest thing to happen to your profile since the Cover Photo. Soon, you’ll have the ability to set a seven-second looping video as your profile pic. (Don’t worry, you can still just have a static pic if you want)

    Facebook is calling them “Profile Videos”.

    “The world has changed since we first introduced profiles in 2004. On News Feed and profiles, we’re seeing people create and view more videos than ever before. Today we’re starting to test the next step in an obvious evolution of profiles: profile videos. Soon, you’ll be able to film a short, looping video clip that will play for anyone who visits your profile. Profile videos will let show a part of yourself you couldn’t before, and add a new dimension to your profile,” says the company.

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    The Profile videos will only show up on your profile, as a frame of them will be what users seen on the news feed.

    If you’re anxious to try it out, hopefully you live in the UK or California. That’s where Facebook is testing the new feature. It says it’ll roll it out to “more people soon.” but given Facebook’s tendency to slow-roll everything, it could be a little while.

    The new Profile videos are actually part of a pretty large update to profiles in general, with a focus on mobile.

    From Facebook:

    Along with these new profile features, we’ve made some design changes to mobile profile that improve the profile layout and better present information about you and your friends in a more visually engaging way. We’re moving your profile picture and video to literally put you front-and-center on your profile. Profile pictures are now centered, and we’ve made them bigger to give you more real estate to show off what you can do with our new creative tools.

    We’ve also made some small changes that will help you learn more about the people you’ve just met and ensure you see the most interesting visual highlights from the friends you already know. People love seeing photos and mutual friends when viewing the profiles of friends or someone they’ve just met, so those are easier to see now on profile. Photos and friends are right at the top, making getting to know someone and seeing the world through your friends’ eyes as easy as scrolling.

    You will soon have better privacy controls atop your mobile Timeline. Also, Facebook is reorganizing the information just under your profile pic (or video?). “You can also fill out the new, one-line ‘Bio’ field: select certain public About fields like work and education details to appear there; and even visually highlight what’s important to you by choosing up to five Featured Photos to be showcased at the top of your profile. While this space is visible to anyone who visits your profile, you have full control of what information appears here,” says Facebook.

    It’s a significant update to Profiles, and people should have a lot of fun with the new Profile videos. It will probably cause and even bigger headache for Facebook’s content moderators, however. Seven seconds is plenty of time to be pretty risqué.

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