Facebook opens up videos to the wider web

Mark Zuckerberg speaking at the F8 conference

Facebook is now letting viewers watch and interact with Facebook videos from anywhere on the web, with the launch of its new embedded video player.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch as part of his opening keynote at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference in San Francsisco this week.

Facebook described the player as “an entirely new social plugin that lets publishers embed native Facebook videos in a full-bleed video player.”

At the same time the social network previewed an “immersive, 360-degree video experience” in the service’s news feed that lets viewers choose the viewing angle to explore your surroundings.

The upcoming feature follows YouTube’s introduction this month of 360-degree video support, which also lets viewers control the angle and point-of-view of supported video clips.

Earlier this year, Facebook reported an increasing shift towards visual content, claiming that in the past year the number of video posts per person has increased 75% globally and 94% in the US. Since June 2014, Facebook claims it has averaged more than one billion video views every day.