Facebook's New Way to Share Your Music and Movie Habits is a Little Cool, a Little Creepy
posted Sunday May 25, 2014 by Nicholas DiMeo
Whenever a story about Facebook comes up, you could probably guess it has a little bit of crazy in it. Things like spending over half a billion dollars on a police station, buying Oculus VR for $2 billion and ruling the skies with solar-powered drones are all considered normal for Facebook's wallet as of late. But occasionally the company makes an interesting internal change or feature-add as well, and no, I'm not talking about the latest layout that you either love or hate. This time, Facebook is launching a way for your smartphone to hear you TV and post about the show you're watching.
Facebook took to its newsroom this week to announce a new way to share and discover music, TV and movies. If you're writing a status update, your smart device's microphone will be able to listen in on what song is playing through your speakers, or what show or movie is playing. This way, you can tell all your friends without ever having to move your thumbs. It's convenient but a little creepy at the same time. Luckily, Facebook has made this a completely optional feature.
Facebook Product Manager, Aryeh Selekman, posted on how it works:
If you've turned the feature on, you'll see an audio icon moving on the screen when you write a status update. If the feature finds a match, you can then choose to add the song, TV show or movie to your post.
Like with any post, you choose who can see it. You can also turn the feature off at any time by clicking the audio icon in the top right of the screen.
If you leave the feature on, you will see the audio icon move and attempt to detect a match when you're writing a status update. No sound is stored and you'll always get to choose whether you post to your friends.
Now, it is pretty cool that if you do decide to share music, a 30-second preview of the song will attach to your status update. And for shows, the season and episode will display so that your friends who haven't seen that episode yet don't have to click on the comments and have it ruined by spoilers.
Naturally, it will be available for Android and iOS users in the US in the next couple of weeks. Sadly, not for Windows Phone. I will say, it'd be kind of cool to share tracks with your friends, but I'm not sure if I'd want to leave this option on by default. Seems a little creepy and I'm not sure that many friends care that much about what content I'm watching at all times. Your mileage may vary.
