Facebook introduced a new feature for Facebook messenger called the “Watch Together”. It is co-watching feature which allows you to watch Facebook Watch videos together with your friends on messenger video call. You will watch the video along with the live video of your friends who are on the call watching together with you.
This feature provides a virtual experience of watching a video together even when they are not together. It is a great initiative especially during this Covid-19 pandemic where social distancing is very important.
However, this feature was not just hurriedly made for the current pandemic situation. In fact, Facebook had actually announced its plans to develop a co-viewing experience for Messenger at its F8 developer conference two years ago.
What is Facebook “Watch Together” feature?
The Facebook “Watch together” feature is a new feature introduced by Facebook using which you can now co-watch videos with friends over the Facebook Messenger. This feature is only available on messenger and you cannot use this feature from the Facebook Watch section.
You can watch videos with as many as eight members in a messenger video call, and as many as 50 members in a messenger room. You have to be in a messenger video call or a messenger room to use this feature.
How to use the “Watch Together” co-watching feature?
Step 1: Open messenger and make a messenger video call with the members or join a messenger room.
Step 2: Now, swipe up and select the “Watch Together” option.
Step 3: After that, you can browse for videos that you want to watch together with your members and watch it.
Also read: Sharing screen on Facebook Messenger | For Android and iOS
There is no particular control to a particular member, and any member in the video call or messenger room can pause, play, or manage other controls of the video. They can also select and play their own choice of videos from the Facebook watch as well.
Facebook has said that there are 150 million video calls in a day nowadays, and people also share 200 million videos to one another in a day. With the growing popularity of video content currently, this will be a welcome feature to all the Facebook users.
Many other video streaming services has introduced the joint watching feature to their services recently including Disney Plus, Netflix, Hulu, Twitch, and Amazon. However, they provide a more popular and wide range of content library than Facebook.
Also, currently the “Watch Together” feature will be available on iOS and Android only. Facebook however does intend to introduce this feature to its Web platform and desktop platform soon.
Will you be using this feature once it is available? Leave your comments below.
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