Canadians get first crack at new Facebook tie-in with Netflix
Facebook unveiled new ways for users to listen to music and watch TV, offering tie-ups with the likes of Spotify and Hulu, as it attempts to make media an integral part of its social networking service.
The features, which Facebook unveiled at its annual f8 developers' conference in San Francisco on Thursday, will vastly expand the types of activities that users of the social networking service can notify their friends about, from the news articles they read to the title of each song they listen to throughout the day.
Facebook users will also be able to listen along to whatever song a friend is listening to, provided they both subscribe to the supported third-party streaming music services, such as Spotify.
The media push comes as Facebook faces fresh competition from Google, which in June launched a rival social networking service, Google+. In recent weeks, Facebook, which counts more than 750 million users, has rolled out a bevy of changes to its service.
“Facebook is positioning itself as not just your social graph online, but your life online,” said Forrester Research analyst Sean Corcoran.