By Caitlin Ramrakha, Product Marketing Manager, and Chetan Gupta, Product Manager

Since launching 360 video on Facebook, we’ve seen more than 1 million 360 videos shared on our platform. As use of 360 has grown on Facebook, we’ve spent more time this year talking directly with the 360 community to learn about how we could make capturing and sharing 360 content even easier.



As next steps from this feedback, today we’re introducing new resources and tools for 360 creators, all accessible in our new 360 Community page. Launched in partnership with Blend Media, the 360 Community page is a hub for all things 360.

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

One of the most frequent requests we’ve received from the 360 community is for centralized educational resources. The 360 Community page will feature video tutorials sourced directly from our community. Today, tutorials include topics like getting started with 360 cameras, 360 video editing workflows and an introduction to spatial audio on Facebook. We look forward to building out this library over the coming months to help you get started with 360 production or take your efforts to the next level.

EVENTS

Throughout 2017 we met with hundreds of 360 video creators at workshops and meet-ups across the globe. We look forward to continuing this series in 2018 and using these events to connect with and learn from more of the 360 community. On the 360 Community page, you’ll find a list of upcoming events near you and recaps from prior meet-ups and workshops.

CAMERA LOANER PROGRAM

We’ve heard from the community that one of the biggest challenges in 360 media production is keeping up with the ever-changing 360 camera ecosystem and needing to test-drive cameras before buying them. Through our new Camera Loaner Program, you’ll have the opportunity to borrow cameras directly from Blend Media for upcoming projects and experiments. At launch we’ll be loaning out the GoPro Fusion and ZCam S1, and we look forward to including more cameras in the coming months.

360 DIRECTOR

We’re also launching 360 Director, a page of creative tools for editing 360 videos on Facebook

360 Director is now available for both Pages and Profiles and includes:

Annotations: A new feature that gives you the ability to add text, symbols and graphic annotations to your content, marked within space and time in your video.

Guide: Previously available only to Pages, Guide enables you to highlight specific points of interest in the field of view over the course of your video. People who watch your video will automatically be directed around the video as it plays. Guide is now available to everyone.

Player Controls: Previously available only to Pages, these controls let you set the effective zoom level of the video, set the initial direction the video starts in, and preview how it will look when posted on Facebook.

Save Draft For Later: To make it easier to use these new tools and features, you can save your Guide points, Annotations, and player customizations so someone uploading/previewing that video can pick up where you left off.

At launch these new tools are in beta, and we encourage you to test these out and share feedback with our team in the Facebook 360 Community group.

To check out all these resources, please visit https://facebook360.fb.com/community. We look forward to building on these resources and tools for you and hearing your feedback and suggestions for helping you get the most out of 360 on Facebook!