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Facebook has announced two major video-related initiatives at its annual F8 conference in San Francisco.
Firstly, the company has revealed it will soon be integrating “spherical videos” which allow viewers to move through the clip and view it from different angles.
The experience, which Mark Zuckerberg showcased with a 24-camera view of Facebook’s Menlo Park HQ, will eventually be available within the Facebook News Feed according to the CEO.
The scheme sets the stage for the launch of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, which is still thought to be on track for a consumer release at some point in 2015.
“You’re going to be able to put on your Oculus headset,” Zuckerberg told attendees at F8, “and view spherical videos there too.”
“We’re starting to see real video merge with virtual reality and augmented reality,” he added.
Read more: Oculus Rift vs Project Morpheus
The Facebook founder also called these spherical videos, which users can effectively step inside, as the “first step” on a larger jump into virtual reality.
Elsewhere, Facebook also announced users will be able to embed videos posted to Facebook anywhere on the web.
Much like YouTube, Facebook now has an embeddable player enabling anyone to take those cute kitty videos and paste them to their personal blog, message boards or other websites.
