Facebook’s Upcoming TV Streaming App

In Facebook’s recent earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg called video a mega-trend on par with mobile, saying the social media company would continue investing and developing new video experiences in the future.

Now, consumers are getting a hint of what that future might look like. In a recent blog post, Facebook announced its latest offering, an upcoming TV streaming app. Initially available on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TVs, the app will beam Facebook’s on-site video content to users’ televisions.

“With the app, you can watch videos shared by friends or pages you follow, top live videos from around the world and recommended videos based on your interests,” Facebook said in a company blog post. “You can also catch up on videos you’ve saved to watch later, as well as revisit videos you’ve watched, shared or uploaded.”

Facebook brought in $8.81 billion in revenue and $1.41 earnings per share in Q4, mostly from ads. And that’s just the beginning. The future of Facebook is going to be video (and with that comes online TV ad dollars). By 2020, the online TV ad market is expected to grow to more than $16 billion — up from $9.8 billion in 2016, according to eMarketer — and Facebook wants to grab as big a piece of that as it can.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “We’re going to continue to put video first across our family of apps and make it easier for people to capture and share video in new ways.”

Last week, Facebook reportedly hired a former MTV executive to help produce “original content” for the platform. The company also just recently debuted a new recommended and popular video tab for U.S. users, with plans to roll it out to more countries soon, Zuckerberg said. He also hinted at upcoming experiments with Live 360 video and audio-only live streaming.