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Unannounced Facebook feature uncovered

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Heard that Facebook are integrating Spotify. Maybe that will be 'Vibes'?

Some more speculation here: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-said-to-l...

This seems to be the most likely conclusion.

How come?

Its a rumor that has been in the open for a while: http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/05/25/facebook-to-la...

Yeah, wasn't there an HN article on Spotify coming to the US recently?

There was earlier some speculation but yesterday it was confirmed by Spotify: http://www.spotify.com/uk/coming-to-the-us/

Spotify is for sure being integrated into facebook. Facebook employees have had access for a while.

Now that Facebook actually has something to worry about slightly, it's kind of cool watching Facebook and Google both scramble to win over the users with these awesome A+ features one after another.

I am actually hoping that Google resists the temptation to fight a war of feature creep with Facebook. In fact, the sum total of my enjoyment of G+ has come from the cleanliness and austerity of its UX (well, maybe combined with the refreshing Circles concept -- but that's arguably a "cleanliness" measure of a different sort).

Personally speaking, I'm totally comfortable with a social network as simply a credentialing and sharing layer running through my other experiences and touchpoints on the web. I don't need everything in one place. I am willing to admit that I might be an odd man out on this sentiment, however.

Count two odd men out.

My ideal social network is a Rolodex on steroids. Just a global, searchable, tagged index that I can pull from for all my apps.

Yes, it would be great if we could separate the social infrastructure from the social apps. If Facebook ever goes under or out of style, we'll lose the graph of everything that's been put on it. But if we had an infrastructure of just a "Rolodex on steroids" that the Facebooks, Google+s, even Youtubes, etc. could build on, that would never be a problem. When you buy a new phone, you don't have to recompile a phonebook.

That sounds like Google Contacts, but I'm not sure if it's taggable. It's what Google uses to automatically bring up your contacts when you activate a new Android phone, suggest friends in G+, and emails in GMail.

Edit: It is taggable, sort of. Head to contacts.google.com and you can search your contacts, as well as place things in a "Notes" field. There's also groups, but I don't know if they're one per contact or labelable.

groups are many to many, just like gmail labels.

Oh I make frequent use of Google Contacts. The high order bit that makes social networks a better Rolodex is that the contact takes some onus in keeping their contact and profile information up to date.

I have yet to find a compelling use case, personally, for Facebook as something other than a Rolodex. Which is why LinkedIn seems redundant to me. I think my brain must be lacking some wires. I just don't get it. My wife does. But I don't.

You seem to be someone who does not feel a need to post your photos, videos, and daily statuses to share with others in your social circle. This is actually a good thing, especially when the endtime comes and all of these companies exploit the information that the rest of us are willingly putting on their servers.

you may want to try out http://prolinkd.com then. It runs on top of Linkedin and provides most of the things you are looking for.

Ignoring the issue of user network adoption, I would love to drop Facebook in favor of G+. But I can't until G+ at least replicates some things it's missing from FB, like Events, and possibly better one-on-one messaging (which I would hope would take the form of email backed by GMail, just as G+ photo sharing is backed by Picasa), and some form of groups/shared circles.

But agreed in that I don't want to see G+ succumb to feature-creep. While I do want to see some sort of API/platform to build stuff, if G+ gets crapped on with Zynga-madness, it'll make me cry.

We all know Games are going to get to Google+[1]. Plus, Google is an investor in Zynga, so it only makes sense.

[1]- http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/30/google-code-reveals-inten...

>which I would hope would take the form of email backed by GMail,

That's exactly how their one-on-one messaging works. They have google talk but if you go to a user's profile, the message button is really an email button.

True, but the fact that this button is disabled by default (or at least it was for my own profile) will make mass adoption difficult. People may wonder "how do I send a message to my mum easily ?".

Events? You mean, Google Calendar?

I think there is a good chance of google resisting this since they can add the features through other (integrated) apps. Why have messaging when you have GMail? Why have events when you have Google Calendar? Etc...

It's interesting to watch but I wonder if it's a healthy practice. I don't see many high-performers quickly reacting to competitor's advances.

It signals a greater focus on what others are doing than what the customers need. HP added bling to their laptops, Apple did nothing.

Reading about the "Lockdowns" at Facebook in response to perceived emergencies in the market makes me feel like there's some knee-jerk reactions happening. Or at least this is how it looks from a distance, I am nowhere close to any of the players in the thick of it.

In the end someone who serves a need not currently being filled will win and they'll keep winning if they keep up with how the needs of the market are changing. That's what Facebook did to MySpace and that's what ACME CO will do to Facebook when they stop filling the needs of the market.

Call me crazy but this seems like a very good time to get into the fight.

Odd to think it will be called Facebook Vibes when the chat isn't called Facebook Peep. Probably just a codename, and it will end up being called Facebook Music.

I would speculate that this could be something like http://turntable.fm built into Facebook.

If so, what a great way to keep users actively using Facebook: I can imagine someone spending a lot of time doing other things on the site while listening to music with their friends.

Facebook wants to be the Portal for you :).

speculation => Well, if tt.fm is raising money at a sudden $40M valuation, maybe they're positioning themselves for a quick exit via Facebook.

That kind of makes sense given you have to sign in via Facebook (which is why I intially didn't try tt.fm).

My senses point to it. From my perspective it makes sense because you can't really point to it being a "serious" app that [serious] matured users would point to as a sense of belonging and we all know that Facebook users have no embarrassment at all when it comes to publicizing anything and everything they deem worthy in an effort to appear cool and belonging.

This is exactly what I was thinking as well. Vibe with your friends

In all honesty the only feature one social network has over another is where my friends are. I never check the stuff otherwise.

This all seems so familiar...

In a completely unrelated note, apparently Myspace sold last week for around $35 million.

I still woundn't mind some investigation on how the call/video feature works. The post mentions some java. We are not talking about applets here are we?

Yes they are talking about Java applets. However, the technology has improved (a large portion of windows users have a java quick launcher set to run on start up) and if it is anything like Facebook's original "Photo Uploader" (back before they integrated with phones and iPhoto and other apps, they had a Java app where you could browse and add photos. It would also scale/reduce quality of high megapixel photos that otherwise couldn't be uploaded to Facebook -- this was down client side through the app and was still relatively quick.) it won't be so bad.

TL;DR: Yes, it's a java applet. However, if its anything like how Facebook has done java applets in the browser, it will feel quick and lightweight on most systems.

> a large portion of windows users have a java quick launcher set to run on start up

So in other words it's still slow but because of vendor pressure it's been lumped into "The OS" to hide that cost from the user?

More overhead is a tradeoff you make to use a VM. I think it's worth it usually but it is there.

>So in other words it's still slow but because of vendor pressure it's been lumped into "The OS" to hide that cost from the user?

I only used it on a Mac, before I discovered plugins that did Facebook integration for iPhoto (and later, that was baked in). And on OS X, no, it was not slow. I'm assuming it would be equally fast for windows.

Also, its not so much lumping the start up cost to "the OS" so much as "The OS Starting Up". How often do people reboot their machines nowadays? Once every six months? With that in mind, it's a pretty negligible trade off.

Personally, I'm more excited about the fact that it requires an app ID. I'm very interested in users being able to record video from within Facebook and upload it.

Anything to escape the awful Flash implementation of it...

You can already record video with your webcam and upload it directly to Facebook, just like you can with YouTube.

I know, but as an app maker I can't interface with that.

I still don't understand why I would want to pay for music through facebook.

People who type "facebook" into Google probably would.

I listen a lot of music through Grooveshark.... I guess FB could implement something similar... I can see a future, where the average user lives permanently on FB listening music, chatting, stalking and who knows what...

Strange that this was posted on July 4th and is now just getting promoted / submitted.

I think he got the date wrong. He couldn't have found it until the video chat feature was live.

yeah, I screwed up on the date...

I was about to fix it, but using jekyll that breaks the link...

You would think they would use another filename that wouldn't reveal Facebook Vibes.

Beautiful! Competition is good for the consumer.

So, Facebook is going the way of MySpace then?

this will surely be their spotify-based app.

FB giving Google a run for its money

So what, Jeff is proud of his discovery. So what, he made a few snarks.

I appreciate the info and he's ultimately correct. "[I] heard it here first."

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