Facebook shows its hand by acquiring video compression startup QuickFire

Facebook has acquired QuickFire Networks, a startup that helps provide high-quality video to users with low speed bandwidth. The acquisition comes just a day after the social network announced that it’s been averaging more than 1 billion video views every day since June 2014. As of yet it does not have the footprint of YouTube but Facebook 1.23 billion monthly active users, 945 million mobile users, and 757 million daily users.

Quickfire is a startup based in San Diego and can quickly convert video formats, allowing them to be downloaded with less bandwidth and without a noticable loss in video quality. This is important for video consumption, especially in countries where high speed internet is not ubiquitous.

“We’re ready to take the next step in our growth”,wrote QuickFire Chief Executive officer Craig Lee on the company’s web site. “Facebook has more than one billion video views on average every day and we’re thrilled to help deliver high quality video experiences to all the people who consume video on Facebook. As part of this, some key members of our team will be joining Facebook and we will wind down our business operations”.

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Facebook has been making plans to get its users to upload videos directly to its site and not link to videos on other sites like YouTube. This enables the company to curate the videos as it please, having them show up in news feed and obtaining data and using for advertising strategies.

The major concern with Facebook’s videos has been the automatic video playback as some users have been complaining about data charges. An acquisition like this will allow for the videos to use less data thus allowing Facebook to push for more video content on its site.

Facebook and QuickFire did not disclose the terms of the deal.