Facebook's new feature identifies music and TV shows/movies playing in the background
With its new feature, Facebook’s mobile app becomes an invisible person that sits right next to you when you're listening to songs or watching a TV show. It’s quite creepy thinking about it.
Facebook Has New Feature Coming
Facebook will release a new feature in its mobile application in a few weeks, and as surprising as it may sound, will be able to identify music playing in the background as well as movies and TV shows through sounds. It will work by enabling the microphone when writing a status update, which will automatically pick up sounds and fingerprint them in a database, with the result being a quick and automatic status update without even typing anything.
This feature will be accessed the same way as the “Feelings” feature. First you tap on the smiley icon when writing a status update, and then at the top right corner of the list of activities you can enable the feature and let it match the sounds it picks up to its database. If you’re listening to a song, then along with relevant information about it (title, artist, cover art, etc.) your friends will also have the ability to listen to a 30-second preview of it. As for TV shows, the status update will include the specific season and episode you’re watching.
Behind The Scenes
Every time Facebook brought a new feature, there would be blog posts all around the internet emphasizing on the impact they would have in the users’ privacy- and it was fair to do so. Facebook has been trying for years now to indirectly force users share more and more of their personal details, which according to plenty of reports get shared and used by other organizations without permission for Facebook’s own good. And with more information on someone’s personality, Facebook can create more accurate and personalized ads, which are its main source of profit.
With this feature, it’s easier for the user to post a status update since it’s automatically done without him even typing anything. People like convenience; hence the percentage of daily status updates is going to rise (like it did when the “Feelings” feature appeared last year). And with more data like that, what follows is a higher precision in targeted ads. Sounds like a plan.
In any occasion, in the near future users will be able to share and discuss the song they’re listening to or the movie/TV show they’re watching without even typing anything. No one knows how accurate this feature will be so for now it’s unclear if it’s going to succeed or fail as a useful feature.
Check the video below to see a demonstration of it:
