Video uploaded directly to Facebook is an increasingly important part of the Facebook news feed, the company said in a blog post on Sunday.

Starting  this week, people will be able to see how many views a video on Facebook has received — just like on YouTube. Ongoing updates to the video player are meant to increase sharing and discovery of clips on the social media platform. Another feature Facebook is currently testing on mobile is a recommendation engine, which shows related videos a user may find interesting once they finish watching a clip.

According to Facebook, growth in video views exceeded 50% from May through July of this year. In the post, the company says that since June there has been an average of more than one billion video views on Facebook per day, with more than 65% of video views coming from mobile globally.

Premium video ad units were made available to Facebook clients in Canada at the end of May, along with a set of metrics to allow companies to privately see how many views each video was receiving. The latest Facebook video recommendation update could allow videos to be seen and shared more often, resulting in greater views on Pages.

From Stream Daily