June 20, 2011 at 12:07 PM ET
In its attempt to make itself indispensable to your life, Facebook is now adding another element that might keep you on the site longer, or never leave it all: music.
GigaOM's Om Malik had the scoop on the next big phase of Facebook's continuing expansion as it closes the gap to 700 million users, despite losing millions of users in the U.S. (Facebook refutes that loss, with spokespeople saying that Inside Facebook derived its findings using the site's advertising tool, which it said did not present accurate figures.)
In his post, Malik reveals:
Facebook’s musical ambitions go beyond Spotify and include other music services and applications. The company is currently working on lining up more partners for the 2011 edition of f8, its annual developer conference, which is most likely to be held in August 2011.
Malik goes on to say his sources have told him that "Facebook has been reaching out to other online music services and much of the attention at f8 should be focused on music. Facebook Connect and Facebook Likes are key components of this effort."
He says that the new music integration is going to work something like this:
- You'll see a new Music tab on the left-hand side of the News Feed page, which will open up to a "Music Dashboard," which will include features like: music notifications (if your friends have listened to songs you've recommended), recommendations by you and/or friends, Top Songs, Top Albums and Recent listens from friends.
- There would also be "a 'happening now'[sic] ticker that shows what is happening in your social and musical universe, including songs that your friends are playing. There is some talk that this 'Happening Now ticker' would show-up all throughout your music experience and not just on the music dashboard."
- Dedicated music page that shows all songs listened to on specific apps, top tracks and how much you repeat listen to some tracks.
- A play button that would be part of or near the current chat box that would control music listens while on Facebook, when you're connected with a service or app that allows you to choose music. It would be linked to play buttons in the News Feed as you scroll through friends' recs.
For listeners, it's another option for this core experience of life, as lately we've been bombarded by music in the clouds. Malik also thinks it could succeed where Apple's Ping has failed, in a true merging of social networking and sharing music recommendations. Try the Amazon Cloud Player, Music Beta by Google, Music Unlimited by Sony and Apple's iCloud and let us know what you think.
More Facebook/cloud stories:
- Facebook loses 6 million US users, continues to conquer globe
- Facebook mobile, now with 250 million users, gets a makeover
- Facebook to hit 700 million users soon
- Sony's cloud-based, digital music service now on Android
- Full coverage: Steve Jobs unveiling iCloud and iOS 5, and launching Mac OS X Lion
- Steve Jobs clears up rumors about iCloud
- iTunes 10.3 now available, brings some iCloud features
Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who loves to share music recs.