

Unannounced Facebook feature uncovered - ghostmachine
http://lifeisagraph.com/2011/07/04/facebook-vibes.html

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budgi3
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...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-
media/facebook-said-to-launch-music-dashboard-service-with-spotify-others/)

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dev1n
Yeah, wasn't there an HN article on Spotify coming to the US recently?

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

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agscala
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.

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jonnathanson
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.

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thomaslangston
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.

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jokermatt999
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.

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thomaslangston
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.

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smackfu
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.

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masnick
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.

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

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

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jsavimbi
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.

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

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lojack
This all seems so familiar...

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

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eiji
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?

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redrobot5050
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.

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wnight
> 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.

~~~
redrobot5050
>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.

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untog
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...

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redrobot5050
You can already record video with your webcam and upload it directly to
Facebook, just like you can with YouTube.

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

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

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Kudos
People who type "facebook" into Google probably would.

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ajhit406
Strange that this was posted on July 4th and is now just getting promoted /
submitted.

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

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rosejn
yeah, I screwed up on the date...

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

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

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The_Igor
Beautiful! Competition is good for the consumer.

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uvTwitch
So, Facebook is going the way of MySpace then?

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shimsham
this will surely be their spotify-based app.

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balakc
FB giving Google a run for its money

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JacobIrwin
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."

