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What’s song matches your current vibe? Facebook wants to make it easier to spark conversations about music and more with its new profile features unveiled during the Facebook IRL event during Austin City Limits earlier this month.
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The social media giant transformed Fair Market in Austin, Texas, into a real-life Facebook account with different stations representing profile features including a hi-fidelity music lounge featuring albums from Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, The Weeknd, Miley Cyrus and other recording stars. The event also included live performances.
“Whatever you’re into, there are people on Facebook that can help you find and do more of it,” Facebook head Tom Alison explained during Facebook IRL. “Our vision is to make it easy to discover that content and those people. Ultimately, that is what Facebook is for. We’ve been helping people explore their interests and discover new things for many years.”
“Facebook is building the best technology to help you discover the content and connections that are right for you,” he continued. “We’ve made major investments in building state of the art AI systems that can service the most interesting content to people all across the world.”
Facebook Messenger Hi-Fi Lounge
Aarron Anderson
New features include a Local tab, which collects content from Reels, Marketplace, Groups and Events on Facebook and Facebook Explore, which lets you dive even deeper dive into your interests.
“It’s personalized around your broad set of interests and allows you to learn and do more with them,” Alison said of Facebook Local. “What is unique about Explore is that it gives recommendation algorithms that are less focused on entertaining content and a bit more focused on finding authentic and practical content that’s going to be useful to you.”
Facebook Local is currently testing in Austin, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Charlotte, Phoenix and San Francisco.
Messenger Communities, another new feature, offers a fresh way for communities to “connect over shared interests and topic-based chats,” according to the company.
Other new features include an upgraded, full-screen Video tab that gives Reels a more prominent position, posts with AI Comment Summaries that you can read instead of scrolling through comments and Matchmaker, a new Facebook Dating feature that you can enact to allow your friends to “swipe for potential matches on your behalf.”
With Facebook’s Weekly and Weekend Digest for Events feature, you can find the best concerts, music festivals and other events in your area and share them with your Facebook friends or groups “to find someone to go with,” noted Alison.
The company also added music and mentions to Notes in Messenger and a new feature that lets you invite your Instagram followers to events that you created on Facebook — regardless of whether they have a Facebook account.
Facebook’s new profile features were announced ahead of the Meta Quest S3 ($299) release on Oct. 15. The Meta Quest S3 is available at major retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target and the Meta store.