Facebook To Update The Look, Features Of Pages’ Video Sections

With its big push into video this past year, Facebook is rethinking how it will display all those videos in a user-friendly manner. As such, the social media site plans to take an updated, YouTube-esque approach to the video section on Facebook Pages by introducing a featured video, playlists, and more.

Soon, all Pages on Facebook will have several new features available to help streamline and organize their respective videos. Pages will be able to highlight a featured video at the top of their Videos tab, which will be decked out with a live comment feed and likes, views, and comment counts. Businesses will also be able to create playlists of their videos on their own Pages.

TechCrunch spotted the new, coordinated look of ABC News’s Page (which ties in well to the media conglomerate’s new Facebook-only video newscast). The redesign is in stark contrast to the current grid-like structure of video clips. At the moment, the Videos tab doesn’t even show the title of the Pages’ videos, or any related information like comments or view counts. The only stat Facebook video sections currently show is the length of each uploaded video.

TechCrunch verified with Facebook that the social media site was testing the new look on the video sections of select Pages. Facebook also noted it plans to provide the new features and format to all Pages in the near future (though no specific date was given). Pages will automatically get the new design implemented. Page administrators will be able to select a featured video, but if they don’t all the Page’s videos will be displayed chronologically and will still show relevant stats like titles and view counts.

Direct video uploads to Facebook exceeded the number of shared YouTube videos for the first time ever in November 2014. With that many videos being uploaded by users as well as brands (like the NFL), Facebook’s changes to the video sections on Pages should better enable brands (and YouTube stars) to properly organize and distribute their videos.