One of the nicest things you could do to set your Facebook business page apart from others was adding a Facebook cover video. Well, with very little fanfare, Facebook has now removed that video option! 👎
The Facebook video cover sits across the top of a business page - where most businesses have their cover photo... Like this:
What many pages didn't take advantage of was that you could upload a video to use instead. This created a much more dynamic feel to the page when visitors arrived and could be changed regularly for seasonal changes, promotions or just to give a fresh feel to the page.
Below was ours - A pretty nice way to welcome visitors to the page, right?
Now, Facebook's video page option was always a little picky - videos had to be at least 20 seconds long and at least 820px x 312px. But you could change them as easily as changing a cover photo and they always got great reactions!
But then one day the cover videos on our pages just stopped moving!... Nooooooo!
We thought this was an error, so contacted Facebook support.
Their first line team couldn't help - they didn't know why.. So they passed in on internally. Then the other day, we got this reply:
"I would like to inform you that we have already received a response from our Internal Team. I understand that you want to upload a video for your Page cover photo.
However, it appears this is an expected behavior as the capability to upload a cover video on Pages has been deprecated as of March 2021.
Please note that you may still upload a cover video in business view, but it will no longer show a video. Instead, it will show a static image chosen from a frame of the video.
With this, we recommend that you consider uploading cover photos or create a slideshow for the Page cover area instead."
Now we think this is a great shame, and if you're wondering, "Where have my Facebook Cover Videos gone?" then now you know.
According to Facebook, they're being replaced with an old-fashioned cover photo... Or a slideshow.
Seriously - why didn't Facebook publicise this change widely? And why didn't their support team actually know the feature had been retired?
Are you a Social Media Manager?
Do you manage pages?... If so, have you noticed the change?...
How do you feel about it?