Facebook watch and scroll comes to desktop (FB)

In February, Facebook launched “Watch and Scroll,” a feature that lets users minimize videos to a picture-in-picture view that keeps playing in the corner of their screen, allowing them to simultaneously browse other stories in News Feed.

When launched, the feature was only available on mobile devices, and Facebook is rolling out the feature across desktop devices today, according to AdWeek.

As video becomes an increasingly important content format in the News Feed, Facebook is experimenting ways to maximize the number of videos contained therein, while also optimizing the user experience for users. Here are a few implications of the roll-out:

Mobile-app makers and content creators are vying for consumer attention in a crowded and noisy market.

Even if an app can stand out enough to prompt a consumer to download it from among a list of millions, it then faces the challenge of enticing him or her to use it enough times to recuperate development, maintenance, and marketing costs. To make matters worse, those marketing costs have hit record-high levels over the past year as discoverability has become more challenging.

And while consumers are spending more time in apps, most of that time is spent in a few favorites. Consumers spend almost three-quarters of their total smartphone app time in just their three favorite apps, according to comScore.

But it's not all doom and gloom: There are numerous tools at a publisher's disposal to engage and re-engage consumers, and there are new products and solutions coming to market that can help alleviate some of the issues around this app engagement crisis.

Jessica Smith, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on app engagement that explores the current state of the app market, the issues around engaging consumers, and the tools at a publisher's disposal. It also identifies best practices for the implementation of some app engagement tools, and presents the pitfalls that some publishers fall into in this pursuit.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it: