Facebook’s Watch Party feature is expanding to every page and profile around the world.
According to a new press release, Facebook is expanding Watch Party — its co-viewing feature that lets users watch videos together in real time — to all pages and profiles.
Since Facebook launched Watch Party to all Groups in July 2018, more than 12 million Watch Parties have been streamed, letting everyone watch the same video at the same time and comment in real time. The key metric, according to the company, is that concurrent-viewing Watch Parties have generated eight times as many comments as non-live videos in Groups.
Some improvements have also been made to this feature such as threaded comments, enabling users to have conversations aside from commenting live. It’s also now possible to schedule a Watch Party ahead of time.
Former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal is one of the first to use the newest Watch Party features. On Wednesday, November 28, Shaq will host a Watch Party from his Page to replay his favorite episodes from his reality series “Big Chicken Shaq.”
Watch Party is part of the social media giant’s efforts to get users to interact more on the social network rather than just sitting back and consuming content. As Facebook tries to get its users to spend more time watching videos, it also faces stiff competition from other tech firms, including Google-owned YouTube.
