Facebook acquires video platform QuickFire Networks

How serious is Facebook about video? The company just made its second acquisition this week, this time purchasing San Diego-based video infrastructure firm QuickFire Networks. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. QuickFire CEO Craig Lee confirmed the acquisition on the company's website: QuickFire Networks was founded on the premise that the current network infrastructure is not sufficient to support the massive consumption of video that’s happening online without compromising on video quality. QuickFire Networks solves this capacity problem via proprietary technology that dramatically reduces the bandwidth needed to view video online without degrading video quality. Over the past few years, the team has worked hard to meet the demanding needs of content creators around the world. Ultimately our goal has always been to provide a premium quality, immediate, bandwidth-friendly video experience to consumers. Now we’re ready to take the next step in our growth. Facebook has more than one billion video views on average every day and we’re thrilled to help deliver high quality video experiences to all the people who consume video on Facebook. Lee noted that some key members of QuickFire will join Facebook, and the company will start to end its business operations. The acquisition seeks to answer a critical complaint of Facebook's video plan, by making the clips more bandwidth-efficient and less data-hungry. Here's Facebook's statement about the acquisition: Video is an essential part of the Facebook experience. We are excited to bring QuickFire Networks on board as we continue delivering a high quality video experience to the over 1.3 billion people who use Facebook. Video is a major part of Facebook's business plan, as it jockeys for position with YouTube as a video host. Statistics from Socialbakers, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, show that among top Facebook brands, media companies, celebrities, and entertainment companies, there were more videos uploaded to Facebook than linked from Google's YouTube in both November and December 2014. Evan James, the head of North American Marketing for Socialbakers, explained the shift: A year ago, YouTube was clearly the dominant network in terms of sheer video quantity, nearly doubling the number of videos published on any other content network. Starting in May, however, content marketers increasingly began uploading videos to Facebook directly, with a 50% increase from May through July. That increase has kept up – and now it appears marketers have made their choice. Readers: Which video platform do you prefer — Facebook or YouTube?

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Facebook acquires video platform QuickFire Networks

Justin Lafferty

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Justin Lafferty