Facebook unveils movie maker tool

Facebook

has unveiled a new movie maker tool for businesses, aimed at helping them create promotional videos in a matter of minutes.

With eight billion video views and one million hours of video watched daily on Facebook, the social network wants to bridge the new mobile economy for small businesses, helping them communicate with customers anytime, anywhere.

Using the tool called “Your Business Story”, businesses can upload photos from their Facebook page, overlay with music and share what they do.

Facebook SMB regional director Ciaran Quilty said the tool creates a 10 second video showcasing the business.

“The business can upload up to eight photos, and choose from five different soundtracks. They then put in text that describes the business. It’s a nice, simple way to create a video.”

“A picture may paint 1,000 words, but a video paints 10,000 words.”

He said Facebook was seeing “unbelievable growth” in terms of the popularity of video on the platform.

Cisco has forecast that video will make up 80 per cent of all consumer internet traffic by 2019.

Facebook also announced there are more than three million businesses – the vast majority of which are SMBs – actively advertising on the social network. This is an increase of 50 per cent in the last year.

The network said 70 per cent of these three million companies are from outside the United States. More than a million advertisers create an ad directly from a mobile device.