Back in May, it was reported that Facebook partnered with Spotify and planned to launch a music service to compete with iTunes. The service would allows Facebookers to listen to their favourite music along with their friends at the same time. It is expected to be launched sometime soon.
Very well. On Wednesday, Facebook launched it’s new video chatting/calling feature (Google+ Hangout is better), powered by Skype. While most of us were enjoying and exploring the new feature, a curious geek was busy investigating the codes of the jar file which came along with downloaded video application file.
Jeff Rose, the curious geek, wanted to know whether Facebook’s Video Calling feature (Did I mention Google+ Hangout is better) made use of the already installed Skype or did it install another version of it? The video calling application file comes with a jar file called FacebookVideoCalling.jar. Jeff started digging up the jar file when he soon discovered a set of lines with something ironic.
He found a reference to an unannounced downloadable plugin called Facebook Vibes.
if (paramString.equals("com.facebook.peep"))
return this.window.getMember("VideoChatPlugin");
if (paramString.equals("com.facebook.vibes")) {
return this.window.getMember("MusicDownloadDialog");
}
The plugin “peep”, is what is currently downloaded and used for the video chat. But the plugin “vibes” seems to be an unannounced feature that is yet to be released.
According to Jeff,
“The vibes app connects with a music download dialog in the page though, so I’m guessing that with this release we are seeing the seeds for Facebook’s upcoming music offering.”
Although he looked into it further, he did not find anything much and it was not likely the entire codec.
It is still unclear to what exactly “Vibes” will do, but since it will be a downloadable plugin that connects with a music download dialog, it for sure makes some sense that it is related to a music feature that could be similar to Google Music or iTunes and a potential competitor.
During the launch event with Skype on Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg noted that Facebook is now in its launch seasonfor 2011. Perhaps “Vibes” will be one of the next features to be announced?
