This year has been pretty big for Facebook and its mobile efforts. So far in 2014, the company has launched a spiffy new Paper app for iOS, acquired messaging app WhatsApp, pulled its Poke and Camera iOS apps and launched a Messenger app on Windows Phone. Today Facebook announced that it’s making another big mobile move by adding new a media recognition feature to its main apps.
Facebook revealed in an official blog post that it will be updating its Android and iOS apps to add a new feature that can identify music, TV shows and movies and then add that information to a status update.
When the feature is turned on, users will see an audio icon when writing a status update. Clicking this icon will allow the app to try and recognize the media that you’re consuming, and if a match is found, it’ll be added to your update. Music-related status updates will include a 30-second preview of the song that you’re listening to, while TV updates will name the season and episode that you’re currently watching.
Facebook has been improving its status update functionality lately to include more information about your friends and the places that you visit, and this media recognition feature seems like a natural way to improve its status updates even more. Users will be able to easily tell their friends about the song that they’re listening to or the show that they’re watching, and other users can then learn more about the content directly from that status update.
Facebook says that this new feature will roll out to its Android and iOS apps “in the coming weeks.”
Via Facebook
