Facebook buys video infrastructure company QuickFire Networks

Facebook said today that it has bought QuickFire Networks, which has developed technology to support the increased consumption of video.

In a statement, Facebook said, “Video is an essential part of the Facebook experience. We are excited to bring QuickFire Networks on board as we continue delivering a high quality video experience.”

In its own statement, QuickFire said it “was founded on the premise that the current network infrastructure is not sufficient to support the massive consumption of video that’s happening online without compromising on video quality.”

Added QuickFire, the company “solves this capacity problem via proprietary technology that dramatically reduces the bandwidth needed to view video online without degrading video quality. Over the past few years, the team has worked hard to meet the demanding needs of content creators around the world. Ultimately our goal has always been to provide a premium quality, immediate, bandwidth-friendly video experience to consumers.”

Neither Facebook nor QuickFire disclosed the terms of the deal.

Last night, Facebook said the number of videos its users post has skyrocketed over the last year, up 75 percent globally and 94 percent in the U.S. It also recently said its videos are viewed a billion times a day on the giant social network, which has more than 1.3 billion users.

Making the video experience better for users, and for advertisers and content creators, is key for Facebook as it seeks to take on Twitter, YouTube, and others in a bid for advertising dollars.

The QuickFire acquisition is not Facebook’s first in the video realm. In July, it bought the video advertising firm LiveRail. Also, the company bought Wit.ai earlier this week, a startup whose technology enables developers to add Siri-like language processing to their apps.