Mark Zuckerberg announced this at f8 back in March, so this isn’t a huge surprise. But today’s the day, folks – 360-degree videos are coming to your news feed.
“Our goal at Facebook is to connect you with the people and things that matter, every single day. Over time, we’ve seen that people enjoy more immersive content in their News Feeds. This is one reason video has been so successful on Facebook, and we’re excited to take it a step further with 360 video,” says Facebook Video engineering director Maher Saba.
“To create 360 videos, a special set of cameras is used to record all 360 degrees of a scene simultaneously. This means that when the video is playing on Facebook, you can choose what angle you want to see it from. On the web you can do this by dragging around the video with your cursor, and on mobile devices you do it by dragging with your finger — or even just by turning your device. You’ll be able to hold up your phone and the 360 video will follow you as you turn, looking around, to experience things from all over the world like never before.”
As of today, a handful of pages and publishers are hopping on the 360 train, including Star Wars, Discovery, GoPro, LeBron James & Uninterrupted, NBC’s Saturday Night Live, and VICE – but anyone will be able to upload a 360-degree video. The 360-degreee videos will only be accessible on the web and Android – Facebook says iOS support is months away.
“There’s also a whole world of video creators and storytellers who are at the cutting edge of exploring this medium, and over the coming days they too will be able to upload their 360 videos to Facebook. We’re excited to see more innovative and compelling 360 videos being shared from these publishers,” says Saba.
YouTube debuted 360-degree video back in March – just days before Zuckerberg announced ti would soon come to Facebook. In July, YouTube launched 360-degree video ads.
You can expect Facebook to follow the same path.