With the rise of smartphone cameras, strong mobile bandwidth, social media and digital-first design we have emerged as a highly visual society. A picture shares a thousand words, and great visuals are often drive the most potent stories on the web.

But why limit pictures to a snapshot in time?

BuzzFeed has been creating more emotive visuals by using GIFs to create moving pictures. Vine videos autoplay, like the long-form GIFs they generally are.

Today, I believe I got peak into the next step in our visual evolution.

About an hour ago, I noticed that videos in my Facebook feed were automatically playing. I hadn't clicked play, they were moving all on their own. Much like Vine videos, they began moving as soon as I paused my scrolling, and yes, the volume was off by default. As a result, I found myself engaging with the content far more often and for longer. I had a very similar reaction when Facebook rolled out their new design for images, providing a larger canvas for better photos.

Could auto-playing video be the next leap forward?

Are auto-playing videos the future of visual communications?