You can now watch Facebook video on your TV
Facebook video is heading to bigger screens.
The social network now allows you to stream video from your smartphone to your television using Apple TV or Chromecast, Facebook announced Thursday. The functionality is available now for iPhone users and coming "soon" to Android.
The feature works for all of Facebook's video, including its live videos. The company notes that if you do watch a live video on your TV, it will be easier to follow user reactions in real time thanks to the larger screen. (They will show alongside the video content just as they do in Facebook's normal video player.)
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You can take the feature for a spin yourself by looking for the TV icon in the video player in Facebook's app or website. Tap the TV and you can choose your Apple TV or Chromecast.
Facebook notes that one benefit of Apple TV and Chromecast support is that it frees you up to continue browsing while the video is playing (the social network has also experimented with picture-in-picture within the app.) But relying on Chromecast and Apple TV has a few other benefits for the social network.
Namely, it means they don't need to build and support their own Apple TV or Android TV apps, which would be more work to maintain. But by adding support for two of the most popular streaming devices, they still get the added bonus of attracting extra eyeballs to their videos, which has become increasingly important to the company's overall strategy.
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
