MUMBAI: Facebook’s f8 conference in San Francisco was a defining moment in history as Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the New Facebook. This could perhaps be the most significant move in recent times for the entertainment business, which could reduce piracy and revive the music and the movie business.
Zuckerberg took the stage after a humorous skit, in which Saturday Night Live actor Andy Samberg impersonated him. The real Mark Zuckerberg looked considerably more playful and at ease.
"The last five years of social networking have been about getting people signed up. Until recently people weren’t sure how long the phenomenon would last. Now social networks are a ubiquitous tool used by billions of people around the world to stay connected every day," said Zuckerberg at Facebook’s F8 developers conference in San Francisco.
While Facebook is keen for its users to stay on the site for as long as possible, Zuckerberg emphasised that the site is a "distribution platform" to other media companies.
Zuckerberg announced new partnerships with companies like Spotify, Netflix, Vevo, Hulu, Yahoo and others with the social network. Through an upgrade to the application development platform, Facebook is making it possible for these companies to more tightly integrate their online services and content with the social networking site.
Facebook members will be able to notify their friends automatically about activities on all media sites, and their friends will be able to call up the songs, TV shows and other content right from within the Facebook interface.
Spotify CEO and founder Daniel Ek said, “Music can make Facebook even better, and that the key to cutting music piracy was making access to music free and social. He added that Facebook users on Spotify listen to more music with a larger variety of genres and are twice as likely to pay.”
Moving on to movies and TV, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, "Netflix is now in 45 countries, and in 44 of them, Facebook integration will be available."
Facebook is poised to give services like Google+, Apple’s iTunes and Amazon some sleepless nights! Mark Zuckerberg has done it again!
