Could it be that Facebook’s ‘awesome’ new feature this week – video calling, is a smokescreen to a really awesome, yet to be unveiled, feature – a music offering called Vibes?
The Huffington Post said, “Software Developer Jeff Rose, on his blog ‘Life is a Graph‘ claims he uncovered a unique string of code while downloading the file necessary to run the new video chat feature. That string of code unveiled two projects: facebook.peep, the plugin for the service announced, and of a yet unknown project, facebook.vibes.
According to Rose, the ‘vibes’ plugin points to a page called “MusicDownloadDialog” and might be the beginnings of a much whispered about Facebook music service.
Check out the code Rose published on his blog (below).
This means that Vibes not only handles music, but apparently downloads it as well.
Whether this confirms a new project or is simply the aftermath of a nixed one, eyes will be on Facebook’s music plans in the wake of Google’s recently launched social network.
On Wednesday, European music streaming startup Spotify announced that it will soon be available to U.S. users. On the other end of the Internet, recently acquired social networking site MySpace may have some music plans of it’s own, bringing on actor/singer/former boyband member Justin Timberlake to lead it’s creative direction.
Facebook Vibes hasn’t been talked about. It hasn’t been referenced or mentioned, and it hasn’t been leaked. Zuckerberg seemed rushed when he announced Video Calling, and many people thought that his “something awesome” remark might have originally been meant for something, well, a bit more awesome than simply lumping a Skype plug-in into a half-baked chat feature.
It’s entirely possible that the reason they’ve been sitting on the chat upgrades for so long, is that he planned to release a trifecta later on. Bringing group chat, video chat, and music downloads in one fell swoop would definitely have made a bigger impression on users who might be lured away by Google+.
The idea of Facebook diving into the music scene isn’t a new one, or even an unexpected one. With the impending demise of MySpace, it’s almost expected that Facebook would try to carry the torch for socialized music–the only question is how they might go about doing it. For that, we’ll just have to wait and see.