14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook's rumored and anticipated music platform was indeed unveiled at its F8 developers' conference, but it was part of a much broader project, the expansion of the Open Graph set of APIs, which will enable developers to build all sorts of apps that interact with Facebook and which rely on social data and relationships.
With Open Graph, developers will be able to define actions that users can do which will then show up on their profiles. The process is seamless and the user doesn't have to do anything, apart from linking their Facebook accounts to the service.
Whatever you listen to music on Spotify, Mog or any of the other music services that integrate the new features, it will show up on your friends' Tickers.
They'll be able to follow a link and start listening to the same song as you, instantly, from the point you're at. Same goes for movies or TV shows, which they'll be able to watch on the site. The rumored universal music player hasn't been released, but it may be in the future.
The subtle but important capability of the new Open Graph is this automated sharing. Essentially, Facebook is making the Like button, which everyone adopted and copied, obsolete and is changing sharing from an deliberate action to an implied one.
The social aspects of listening to music, watching a movie, or even reading an article, could add a lot of value to those services and enhance the otherwise solitary and isolated experience of the digital world.
For starters, Facebook has partnered with music streaming services, movie and TV show streaming sites, and newspapers to provide apps that rely on the new Open Graph.
But any developer and company can join in, either with another music service or with a completely unrelated app. Facebook's examples were 'running' apps, that keep track of your daily runs, or recipe apps that share what you've been cooking lately.
The question is, will most people really want to share each and every track they listen to? Or sappy soap opera they watch secretly? With heavily subjective things like music, movies and so on, there are few people comfortable with sharing with their friends everything they listen to, watch or read.