Facebook Messenger Now Supports 360-Degree Photos, HD Videos

Facebook is rolling out a new version of its Messenger app, and it is one that adds support for 360-degree photos and HD videos. Facebook has also updated its News Feed to help users assess if the stories they stumble upon are trustworthy and legit.

On Tuesday, Messenger product managers Sean Kelly and Hagen Green wrote a blog post to explain the new features of Facebook’s free mobile messaging app. “Visuals are the best way to add delightful expression and meaningful emotions to your chats … Thats why today, we are introducing the ability to send 360-degree photos in Messenger,” they stated.

Support for 360-degree photos means users can now share panoramic shots in Messenger. Panoramic photos give an immersive view of landscapes and natural sceneries, so the new feature will come in handy when users want to show their friends the beautiful place they are currently visiting or have visited.

In addition, Messenger now has support for HD videos. This makes it possible for users to share high definition clips straight to the messaging app. The feature appears to be capped at 720p since Kelly and Green specified that users can send and receive “HD quality, 720p videos” from now on.

It’s important to note that the Messenger app doesn’t have the ability to capture 360-degree photos and HD videos. The app is simply getting support for these files. Therefore, users will need to rely on their stock camera app or third-party ones for the images and clips that they will share through Messenger, as pointed out by Android Police.

Aside from the new Messenger features, Facebook has also announced an update to its News Feed. This is a server-side update, so don’t expect to see a new version of the Facebook app. The update is intended to help users discern if the articles they are seeing in their News Feed are genuine.

With the prevalence of fake news on social media, Facebook is making another move to counter the problem by introducing a new News Feed feature. The feature will provide context about the publisher of a story and will show links to other posts made by publisher. It will also inform users if any of their friends have shared the same content. This way users can decide for themselves which articles to read, trust and share.