By: Emily Altenhausen and Sam Biddle, Recode staff membersTechnology companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have all announced plans to open their own video streaming video services, with Facebook saying it will be launching an app that streams video from its own content over the next few weeks.
The companies said Thursday that they would launch an app to allow users to stream content from Facebook’s News Feed and from Google’s YouTube, which already provides a streaming video service.
The companies said the new service will be similar to the existing Facebook video app, but it will offer more customization.
Facebook said it would also start rolling out video streaming from its video network, which has been used by the social media giant to provide video on-demand for about a decade.
The new service, called Stream, will allow users from all three companies to upload content from their own content to their own accounts and then stream it to others, and it will have its own video and audio playback, Facebook said in a blog post.
It will also be able to sync videos to the same devices and to stream them on-device.
The video streaming service is the first major move for the companies in a move that could signal a shift toward a video-heavy model for content as they seek to capture the attention of new users who want to watch video without paying for an expensive subscription.
Facebook has previously tried to keep users from spending money on video subscriptions, saying the social network doesn’t make money from ads on its videos.
Facebook currently has more than 4 billion monthly video users.
Google, meanwhile, said Thursday it will launch its own app, Android Video, that will let users upload videos from their YouTube channels, and the company said it will add video to its Android app as well.
Facebook also said it is expanding its video streaming app, YouTube Video, to include video from YouTube’s YouTube channel and from other Google properties.
The move comes as the technology giants have been trying to make the video content on their platforms available more easily to the masses.
Facebook, for example, has launched its own Video On Demand service for users to upload videos to their accounts, and a new app lets people watch video from other companies on YouTube without paying a monthly fee.
Amazon has launched a video streaming subscription service, Prime Video, as well as a video service called Vimeo that lets users stream video from Amazon Prime Video.
Google said Thursday in a statement that it would continue to expand its Video On-Demand service.
The app will also let users from other platforms like Apple’s iMovie, Microsoft’s Vimeo, and Apple TV, among others, upload videos, and users can watch videos on their mobile devices, the company wrote.
Amazon, meanwhile will expand its app to include more video content and will add videos from other Apple devices, Amazon said.
The video streaming provider said it plans to expand YouTube Video to include videos from Apple TV as well, and will roll out its own on-premise video service in the future.
The company said that it plans on launching the service in a few months and that it will let the app get its own user-generated content and other video content.