A person holds an iPhone displaying the Facebook app logo in front of a computer screen showing the facebook login page. (Photo : Getty Images/Carl Court)
Supergiant social media Facebook introduced on Aug. 10, Wednesday, two new tools for users who want to post 360 degree videos. These two features are called Guide and Heatmap.
Facebook's Guide is described to be a feature that lets users who publish 360 videos to label and guide the whole tour in order for watchers to see the crucial moments and important events transpiring in these videos. Facebook's Heatmap, on the other hand, is a feature that shows portions of the field of view that watchers are viewing the most, according to Adweek.
To elaborate further, Guide introduces a "narration" style of visual aid by highlighting areas of interest throughout the whole 360 degree video. When the publisher selects certain key points with the Guide feature, this automatically lets the camera move by itself into the field of view where an interesting event is happening so that users do not miss out with the action.
The Guide is still flexible because it allows users to simply swipe around if they wish to see the surrounding area more. Users can also toggle back and forth between turning the Guide on and off as they wish.
Heatmap is an application that is mainly beneficial for the publishers themselves. The tool allows the poster of the 360 degree video to know which fields of view users spend most time watching. The name is chosen for this feature because it represents a map that displays which parts of the video are the "hottest" in terms of where watchers spend their time looking.
The Heatmap feature will be readily available for all videos that have been posted after April this year with more than 50,000 views. Consequently, Digital Trends quoted Paul Beddoe-Stephens as saying that publishers can first analyze the data from Heatmap before proceeding to use the Guide feature, just in case the publisher wishes to do so without knowing how to begin.
Other than these two additional features for the 360 degree videos being posted on Facebook, the live video feature will also be receiving new tools for its analytics. This will give publishers real-time insights with regards to reactions, shares, and comments while they are concurrently broadcasting their live videos. A video posted below is a good start for users who are interested in publishing 360 degree videos.
