Facebook has made a move to improve the quality of its increasing amount of video content by acquiring San Diego, Calif.-based QuickFire Networks, whose specialty is lowering the bandwidth requirements for videos without sacrificing quality.
Financial details were not released.
QuickFire Networks’ custom software platform greatly reduces video file sizes and upload times. It will make the processing and deployment of Facebook’s quickly increasing amount of video content, both in advertising and from its content partners, much more efficient.
QuickFire’s software speeds up the tedious encoding of videos by orchestrating multiple core processors to work together in an efficient manner. It uses different profiles for frame rate, resolution, color and audio settings for various platforms and custom-designed motherboards built to accommodate up to 11 high-end Intel Core i7 processors.
At this time, an estimated 1 billion videos per day are viewed on the social network, which currently lists 1.35 billion users. The amount of video on Facebook’s news feed more than tripled in 2014, and the company is planning to tweak the Website’s design so marketers can more easily buy video ads and monitor their campaigns.
The efforts are key to the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company’s initiative to tap the U.S. online video advertising market, which eMarketer estimates will reach $7.8 billion this year, up 30 percent from $6 billion in 2014.
Last year, Facebook changed its service so that videos in its users’ news feeds begin playing automatically, instead of opening a new page. Facebook believes it important to get videos to play as quickly as possible, especially on mobile phones.
In a separate news item Jan. 9, a study by the Pew Research Center reported that Facebook remains the most popular social media site in the United States. Fifty-eight percent of the entire adult population currently have an account, the study found.
When the report is screened for adults who use the Internet—which is 81 percent of all Americans—Facebook’s member percentage is even higher. Nearly 75 percent of online adults used Facebook, the survey found.