Facebook lets friends watch shows together while apart
The world's largest social network on Monday launched Watch Together, a free feature it is rolling out globally on its Messenger communication platform.
by AFPCoronavirus lockdowns have led to a sharp increase in virtual watch parties as a way to get together with friends, and Facebook is getting in on the action.
The world's largest social network on Monday launched Watch Together, a free feature it is rolling out globally on its Messenger communication platform.
"Connecting through video has understandably become more important for our Messenger community in the past few months," Facebook product manager Nora Micheva said in a blog post.
"We created Watch Together to make spending quality time with friends and loved ones feel as close to an in-person experience as possible."
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How does a vaccine work?
A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.
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There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.
What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?
Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.
There are more than 150 million video calls a day on Messenger, and more than 200 million videos sent each day using the service, according to Micheva.
Watch Together is designed to let people enjoy videos simultaneously while chatting with friends on screen in a video call.
"Whether it's watching a trending video, a movie, a sports highlight, a makeup tutorial, or a Facebook Watch original, the feature allows you to watch your friends' reactions at the same time," Micheva said.
For the launch, Facebook has partnered with celebrity fitness trainer Melissa Alcantara to create a series of workout videos.
Watch Together can be activated from a Messenger video call capable of handling up to eight people, or in virtual "rooms" that as many as 50 online friends can visit at the same time.
Facebook this year launched the virtual "rooms" feature, where friends can pop in for visits via online video as part of an effort to help users locked down during the pandemic.
The social network has also made it possible for artists, teachers, creators and others to host paid events online as real-world gatherings have been thwarted by virus prevention measures.