Facebook to transform into an entertainment hub

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces Spotify and Netflix tie-ins, as competition from Twitter and Google prompt move Facebook has unveiled sweeping changes to its website – including partnerships with major music and film companies – in a bid to transform the world’s biggest social network into a key entertainment hub. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, on Thursday announced new partnerships with Spotify, Netflix, the Guardian and other media companies as he said that 800 million people worldwide now use the social network. “The last five years of social networking have been about getting people signed up,” Zuckerberg told Facebook’s f8 conference in San Francisco. “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.” Facebook has in recent months recently ramped up its attempts to attract and keep internet users on the site in the wake of competition from Twitter and a new rival in Google. Facebook is expected to hit the 1 billion user mark within weeks, having doubled the number of active users since February 2010. As part of the changes announced on Thursday, Facebook users will be able to automatically share activity such as viewing, listening and reading in a live “ticker” stream, once they have opted in to the feature. The new stream will be separate from the existing Facebook news feed, although popular items – such as the most frequently played songs among friends – will appear in the column. “We are making it so you can connect to

Posted by on September 22, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.