That was pretty fast footwork on Facebook’s part. Less than 2 weeks after it first said that it will launch apps for connected TVs, Facebook’s brand new application has arrived to Samsung’s Smart TVs. Considering that the company had refused to give any dates for the arrival of its for-TV video app, no one expected its to arrive quite this soon. Needless to say, folks– and particularly folks with one of those Samsung Smart TVs — were pleasantly surprised.
Speaking on the topic, Sangsook Han, Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics, said:
It is a pleasure to bring the world’s social network to Samsung Smart TV users, as well as continue to see the value of Samsung Smart TV, as a platform, growing. We will continue in our innovation on various fronts, including technologies and partnerships, to make sure our consumers can enjoy a wider variety of services.
The Facebook video application can now be accessed upon Samsung Smart TVs, including its 2017 QLED TV lineup and all of its 2015, 2016, 2017 Smart TV models. That is a pretty large lineup and will put Facebook’s video content in front of a large number of audience. While installing and launching the app, users have to authenticate their Facebook accounts to bring up the relevant video content.
Once that is done, users can then start enjoying content sourced directly from the social networking platform. From videos shared by friends or Pages they follow to those recommended to them based upon their interests and what Facebook has learned about them from the time they have using the social media platform. Recommendations are going to play an important role in the success of this app on TVs considering that no one is going to install it merely to look at videos from their friends.
The launch of the app will have a greater impact on Facebook as compared to Samsung. Facebook has been doubling down upon videos of late what with the launch of a whole bunch of new ways for users to consume them. Live videos, more revenue generation options, picture-in-picture mode and now the launch of its app on Smart TVs starting with Samsung, it seems like the social media platform had a plan to give videos more prominence as a means of revenue generation on its platform, and that plan is finally coming together now.
Meanwhile, the app is also expected to launch upon Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV. However, no word on its availability on those platforms is available quite yet.
