Facebook Rolls Out New Feature "Slideshows"

Humanitarian mission or self benefit? That is still a question Facebook users have not been able to answer, after the social media giant rolls out "Slideshows"

On Thursday, the social media giant rolled out a new product which will make video ads available to those people from emerging markets that have a hard time viewing them. This new product is called “Slideshows”. It is going to be a photo slideshow which will be created by a specific brand. The slideshow will work on all devices and levels of connectivity whether its 2g, 3g networks as such networks are widely used in Southeast Asia, India and South America. The purpose for the introduction of the new slideshow is that while the traditional video ad viewing is quite popular in the United States and loads on high level of speed there, in other emerging markets it takes a while to load. On a Facebook blog post it was stated that a slideshow takes five times shorter and smaller than the old-fashioned video ads. A slideshow is not merely a video but it is ‘video-like’ and definitely more entertaining and engaging. Facebook’s aim of launching “Slideshows” is that it has started to actively grow in emerging markets like India where internet connectivity is a long time issue. These places have weak WIFI and networks hence it become a difficult task for the user to load a 5 minute video. Facebook is looking to make more money from these emerging markets g that is way Zuckerberg has decided to launch the service in India. Mark Zuckerberg recently visited India to support and convince the nation to bring wireless internet to the masses through Facebook, Inc.’s Internet.org initiative. The CEO stated that at the conference, held in India, that it is a ‘moral responsibility to get the world connect – but ultimately it comes down to Facebook’s own benefit which will be that if internet is widely available to the masses that would mean more people will want to join Facebook and more companies will be attracted to advertise on the social media website. In the future the company has also planned to bring the same slideshow Facebook ad feature to Instagram. The service was launched in the Indian market on October 29, 2015. In other news, according to Tech Crunch, the company is rolling out another feature on the Facebook App through which users will be able to communicate with strangers in an easier way. This rollout is called “Message Requests”; this new request feature will be the replacement of “Other Messages”. Now the users will be able to view messages from other users that used to go directly in to the ‘other messages’ folder.