Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said before that he believes the social network is on its way to being “mostly video,” and today Facebook announced that it will be launching its own TV app while also improving its mobile video player.

In a blog post, Facebook revealed that it will be launching its own video app for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV, along with other platforms that will be announced later.

“With the app, you can watch videos shared by friends or Pages you follow, top live videos from around the world, and recommended videos based on your interests,” said Facebook Product Manager Dana Sittler and Engineering Manager Alex Li. “You can also catch up on videos you’ve saved to watch later, as well as revisit videos you’ve watched, shared or uploaded.”

The new app could make Facebook video even more prominent, and it unlocks a whole new realm  of potential for the many media organizations who are partnered with Facebook, such as CNN or The New York Times. Facebook had already allowed users to stream video to their TV using their mobile devices, but the app will make the social network’s potential couch audience even larger.

Mobile video updates

In addition to the new TV app, Facebook also announced several changes to they way videos work on its mobile app. One change, which may not be welcome by everyone, makes videos in the news feed automatically play with sound on mobile devices. Previously, the videos would autoplay, but the sound would be muted until the user tapped to enable it. Now the sound is on be default.

“As people watch more video on phones, they’ve come to expect sound when the volume on their device is turned on,” Sittler and Li explained. Facebook noted that the sound will still not play if your phone is set to silent, but be prepared to get busted for browsing Facebook at work if you forget to turn your volume down. Of course, you could also simply disable the new feature in the Facebook app settings by switching off the “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound” option.

Perhaps a more welcome update announced today is an improvement to the way vertical videos are displayed on mobile. These are the frustratingly tall and skinny videos recorded by people who do not have the sense to turn their smartphone sideways when shooting video. According to Facebook, these videos will be a little more watchable with its new update, which allows users to view them at full size in their native aspect ratio rather than squishing them down to postage stamp size no matter which way they turn their phone.

Taking a page out of YouTube’s playbook, the Facebook app will also now allow users to minimize a video to a picture-in-picture view, allowing them to continue browsing the news feed while also watching the video.

You can watch a video introducing Facebook’s new video features here.

Image courtesy of Facebook