Facebook expands Watch Party to Pages and profiles
It’s also testing new features like live commenting and scheduled Parties.
Earlier this year, Facebook launched Watch Party, a way for members of Facebook Groups to watch videos together, and since then, more than 12 million Watch Parties have been hosted on the platform. Now, Facebook is bringing them to Pages and profiles. The company said in July that it was exploring the idea of expanding Watch Party beyond just Groups, and it has been testing the video-watching feature with a handful of Pages, including those managed by WWE and BuzzFeed. It added that Watch Parties have been rolling out to individuals' profiles as well and the feature is now available globally as of today.
Facebook is also testing some new Watch Party features. Pages and Groups will be able to schedule a Watch Party in advance, giving interested viewers time to plan on joining, and comments will now be threaded. Plus, Facebook is rolling out a live commenting feature so that hosts can provide their own live commentary within a Watch Party while a video is playing.
TechCrunch reported earlier this month that Facebook was testing a Watch Party-like feature for Messenger. If this latest expansion proves to be as successful as Watch Party has been in Groups, it wouldn't be surprising to see it roll out to more of Facebook's platforms.
