At F8 today, Facebook announced updates to its Video API, additions to its Media Solutions Program, and a new Embedded Video Player – each of which has major video, streaming, and TV implications.
Here’s a quick rundown of the updates. For more on the Embedded Video Player, see Facebook’s Developer Blog:
- Video API: Facebook announced a number of updates to its Video API, allowing for more control and customization of videos on Facebook. These improvements help media companies, brands and video creators better reach their audiences.
- Media Solutions Program: Facebook has extended the program to include a specialization in Video Publishing, and have added a handful of partners that are already integrating its updated Video API.
- Embedded Video Player: A new full-bleed, interactive video player, allowing publishers to easily embed any public video from Facebook onto their websites.
Below, a blog post on the Video API and Media Solutions program via Lior Ben-Kereth, Engineering Manager, Videos
Many media companies, brands, and other video creators publish video to Facebook, either directly through their Page or programmatically through our Video API.
Today, we’re announcing a number of updates to our Video API, allowing for more control and customization of videos on Facebook. With these improvements, we hope to help these creators better reach their audiences on Facebook.
We’re also excited to announce ten Media Solutions partners who are integrating our Video API and can help publish video natively to Facebook.
New API Features
Control:
– Restrict the audience of a video by age, gender, and location
– Publish directly to a Page without distributing in News Feed
– Set an expiration date for a video and retain insights after takedown (currently in beta)
– Manage featured videos and playlists for a PageCustomization:
– Add custom thumbnails for videos
– Enable subtitles in multiple localesOther improvements:
– Ensure faster, more reliable uploads with resumable uploading
– Subscribe to real-time updates during video encoding processBeyond these improvements, the API also includes all the same features available to Page owners, including setting a call-to-action, scheduling a video, and gaining insights on a video’s performance.
We hope this full-featured API will help video creators manage content windows and distribution requirements for their videos on Facebook.
Video Publishing Partners
Last year at this time we announced the Media Solutions Program (previously the Public Content Solutions Program) to better serve the strong ecosystem of partners using our media APIs. These partners help media companies and organizations tell rich stories with data, surface great content for their programming, and engage audiences with voting, polls, Q&A and more.
Today, we’re extending this program to include a specialization in Video Publishing. This track will include partners that deliver CMS platforms, clipping tools, and channel management for video.
We’re excited to welcome the following partners to this specialization: Anvato, Brightcove,Fullscreen, Grabyo, Kaltura, NowThis, SocialFlow, Spredfast, Vimond, and WhipClip.
Learn more about integrating our Video API.