Facebook adds video replies to its list of commenting options

10.06.2016
For those times when only a personal message will do, you can now upload videos to the comments section of any Facebook post by a person, page, group, or event. As of Friday, the new feature is available worldwide on Android, iOS, and the desktop.

Video comments were born out of a Facebook hackathon held earlier in 2016. If you’re not familiar with the term, a hackathon is where company developers are given limited time (usually a day, weekend, or evening) to create any new feature they want. We’ve seen interesting results come from hackathons before, such as the mobile app Timehop, which began as a Foursquare hackathon project way back in 2011.

The impact on you at home: To use the new video commenting feature, click/tap the camera icon in or next to the comment field on a Facebook post. Mobile users should be able to upload videos taken directly from their device’s camera. In my tests, however, I wasn’t able to access the external webcam connected to my PC. Instead, I could only upload videos from my hard drive.

This is actually the second time Facebook has allowed videos in the comments section. You can already insert a link from popular video sites like YouTube, and Facebook displays the video in-line.

Now that you can post comments using video, it will be interesting to see how often people use this feature. It’s far easier to just add a sticker, or a quick sentence or two, rather than recording a video. Though if you want to share a funny activity that your kids or pets are doing in the moment, or if you want to show people your current surroundings, it could be an appealing feature.

(www.pcworld.com)

Ian Paul