Facebook's move to acquire QuickFire is a big push towards video

Facebook has added another acquisition to their kitty. This time, the company has acquired  **QuickFire Networks** , a startup that helps view high-quality video with low bandwidth. Based in San Diego, Quickfire is known to quickly convert video formats and allow them to be downloaded with less bandwidth and without a loss in video quality. This acquisition definitely shows how serious the company is about integrating videos to their social network. Facebook explained in a blog post, how it is seeing a major shift towards visual content, especially videos. It reveals that Facebook users have been posting videos more frequently over the last year. Since June 2014, Facebook witnessed an average of more than **1 billion video views each day** . As video posts have increased by 75% over the world, it explains how users prefer to opt for video-sharing rather than posting it in traditional ‘words’. As trends are changing, Facebook’s acquisition QuickFire will definitely improve and speed up the process and functionality of videos on their platform. With QuickFire, Facebook has ensured that the performance of videos on their network, which is used by billions every day, will offer a smoother process. Re/Code pointed out that part of this acquisition is due to Facebook’s strategy to promote video, and the introduction of autoplay video. When users upload a video directly to Facebook, it autoplays in News Feed. A tweak to the algorithm means that the more video you watch, the more video Facebook will show you. This explains how the company themselves want to promote videos to their users and also, explains how Facebook is preparing themselves to deliver users a good experience. This technology proves to be beneficial as the service can compress videos to lower bit rates without compromising on it’s quality and increase it without increasing file size. The report also stated that the QuickFire technology could also help Facebook surface high-quality video to users in emerging markets where Wi-Fi and cellular data access are hard to come by. As Facebook’s strategy includes promoting video services to its users, it could also take a share of Google-owned YouTube viewers which thrives on videos, completely. The company could also monetize this service in due course of time to promote selected videos. This pattern has also been followed by Instagram. As of now, the acquisition looks positive for the company, as well as for its users globally. Just this week, Facebook acquired Wit.ai , a software which focuses on voice recognition technology for wearable devices and internet-connected appliances.