Facebook’s attempt to “transform” the media world with new tie-ins to digital music, video and news services has met a mixed response from users and industry executives.
Music streaming services such as Spotify, MOG and Deezer are plugging into Facebook, betting it can succeed where MySpace failed in tying social networking to music discovery and consumption.
Users will be able to see exactly which songs their friends are listening to as they play it, then click a link to listen along simultaneously. If applications are granted permission, every track played or video watched will automatically be sent to their friends’ live “ticker” and an “activity log” on Facebook.
“We are very excited,” said Gustav Söderström, chief product officer at Spotify. “We think it’s the first time that being social with music is actually being realised.”
Axel Dauchez, chief executive of France-based Deezer, said MySpace “was playing the social aspect of music very well”, but in comparison with Facebook’s platform it lacked a “real music solution” that would drive purchasing as well as sampling.
Deezer plans to use Facebook’s global reach of 800m users as a springboard to launch in more than 100 countries before the end of the year, which he hopes will attract “tens of millions” to its free two-week trial.
Some observers suggested that Facebook’s new features, announced this week, could pose a threat to Apple, whose iTunes and iPod combination has dominated digital music sales.
“Apple were trying to take the market through devices. Facebook are trying to do it through people,” said Simon Mansell, chief executive of TBG Digital, a Facebook marketing agency.
But Adam Kidron, founder of Beyond Oblivion, which plans to launch a new digital music service, Boinc, later this year, warned against handing too much power to Facebook, saying that “the true value of content is in driving social behaviour rather than being chauffeured”.
“When will we learn? The reason we are such a small industry today is that we gave much of the value created in the CD era to MTV, and handed Apple the keys to the download era when Steve Jobs came down from Cupertino with the iPod,” Mr Kidron said. “We should not enable Facebook to become the uber-brand of digital music 2.0 and expect a different result.”
Mr Söderström argued that this might be of benefit for the music industry because Facebook’s popularity could drive more people away from piracy and towards legal services.
As well as integrating entertainment services, Facebook is also bidding to transform its members’ profiles from a list of their latest updates to a virtual scrapbook encompassing their entire lives – including before the site’s creation in 2004 – called Timeline.
But some users have been left baffled by a wide array of changes to their “news feed” and personal profile, two of Facebook’s central elements.
Chris Applegate, a social media consultant, said the introduction of Timeline was the “straw that broke a proverbial camel’s back” and said he had shuttered his Facebook profile after four years.
“Now it’s impossible to escape your past. Everything you have ever done that has been digitally logged by you, or your friends, can now be potentially dished up as your very own digital This Is Your Life.”
Taken as a whole, the new features could provide an uplift to Facebook’s fast-evolving advertising sales.
“A lot of these moves have been about making the updating that goes on happen more frequently, because that creates more targeting opportunities for advertisers and creates a richer experience for people,” said Mr Mansell.
