Facebook Can Now ID What You’re Listening To Or Watching On TV

Do you want all your Facebook friends to know exactly which song you’re listening to whenever you post something online? How about which TV show you’ve got on in the background? What’s that — you do want to tell the world these things, but you don’t feel like going through the onerous task of having to type this info out? Then the newest feature for Facebook’s mobile apps is up your over-sharing alley.

Before anyone freaks out — the Facebook app isn’t actively listening to the background noise and reporting back what you’ve got on the radio. No, it’s an opt-in service that lets you press a button when you’re posting a status update, triggering a Shazam-like audio-matching search that, if successful, will let your friends know you are listening to “Muskrat Love” or watching a rerun of “The Steve Wilkos Show.”

But once you do opt-in, the Facebook app will try searching for audio every time you post a subsequent status update. The company says you can just toggle the search off by pressing the new audio bars icon that indicates whether a search is being done.

The new feature will be rolling out to both iOS and Android devices in the coming weeks.

Of course, whatever info you share with your Facebook friends is also presumably being collected and scraped by the Facebook computers that can use the aggregated data it receives to do its own market research and make some money by selling that info to others.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist