A new feature is out, from the Facebook warehouse on Thursday. It is a new “listen with” feature, which lets groups of people listen to the same song at the same time via Facebook’s music service.
The company blog post had an explanation posted related to the new feature, detailed by Facebook product designer Alexandre Roche:
This feature lets you listen along with any of your friends who are currently listening to music. You can also listen together in a group while one of your friends plays DJ.
Its working is simple, as a Facebook user , who is listening to music via any one of the available music services on Facebook, will get a music note next to their names on the Facebook chat sidebar. Once done, a “listen with” button will appear and when a user hovers over a name that has a music note next to it. One might think it is creepy, as once a user clicks on that button, he/she would hear the exact same thing that their friend is hearing at that time.
Facebook, seems to be finally turning cautious, in its approach, working on its advertising campaigns and at the same time it working on a number of features, to keep users addicted to Facebook. Moreover, using music as an option would do the company only good.
Noting the announcement, the social networking giant made use of its blog to tell everyone about the service. The blog noted that Facebook is adding music services on its social networking site, which will give users an option to listen along with their friends to whatever they are listening to. Additionally, users can listen to a specific song in a group too, with their friend. Here, one of the friends would play the DJ, rolling on to the changes in the tunes.
For Facebook users, this might be a new thing, but this service resembles turntable.fm, an online music service, to a great extent. Turntable.fm allows people to create music listening rooms and at the same time, they can share DJ duties with their friends. This past summer, the service was an unexpected hit, closing on to $7 million in venture capital in Sept. 2011.
However, the update from Facebook is bigger in the sense that 800 million+ users make use of the social networking site on a daily basis. For most of the users, it would be a great experience as they can fell like being in a club, enjoying with their friends, even though they are no where near. The virtual world can take a bigger stage, as noted in the example below.
5 friends join in a DJ group, listening to a specific song. At the same time, they use the Video chat option. There they are! A virtual meet up. They can dance, sing along and chat too. The DJ plays a regular DJ, giving the feel of a Disco. That’s more than what one can consume, if actually made use of.
Facebook, seems to be working on ways to prevent users from switching over to the potential social networking giant, Google+, which is progressing at a Cheetah’s speed. There are no breaks in its innovation car and Facebook needs to keep pace, if it wants to retain that ‘number one’ position for years to come.