Facebook acquires QucikFire Networks
09 Jan 2015
Social network Facebook announced acquisition of QuickFire Networks, a startup that helps view high-quality video with low bandwidth. QuickFire announced its acquisition on its blog yesterday.
The two companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.
San Diego based Quickfire is known to quickly convert video formats and allows these to be downloaded with less bandwidth and no video quality loss, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The acquisition of the video technology companies comes a day after it said in a blog it averaged over 1 billion video views every day since June 2014.
According to the social network video posts per user were up by 75 per cent around the world, and 94 per cent in the US, which meant the number of videos in a user's News Feed from people and brands had gone up 3.6 times against last year.
The company said in its website: ''QuickFire Networks will provide you with the weapons necessary to meet the onslaught of the video revolution.''
Facebook had been looking to allow users to upload video directly to its site, rather than linking to videos on other sites like YouTube. Hosting the videos kept Facebook users on the service and gave the company more control over how the videos could be viewed and placed around advertising. The process may be speeded up with Quickfire's technology.
The social network last year changed its service to allow videos in its users news feed. The company had stressed how important it was to get those videos to play as quickly as possible, especially on mobile phones.
''Now we're ready to take the next step in our growth,'' wrote QuickFire chief executive officer Craig Lee on the company's web site. ''Facebook has more than one billion video views on average every day and we're thrilled to help deliver high quality video experiences to all the people who consume video on Facebook.''
