Perhaps you noticed that Facebook looks a little different lately? Well, it's about to sound a little different, too, if the latest rumor from TechCrunch is true.
Huffington Post Tech sister site TechCrunch is reporting that Facebook Creative Director Ji Lee accidentally tweeted what may be a brand new, as-yet-unrevealed feature that would allow users to see in real-time what music their friends are listening to and then choose to listen along with them.
"The 'Listen with your friend' feature in ticker is blowing my mind. Listen to what your friends are listening. LIVE," tweeted Lee. Apparently this new feature will be an offshoot of Facebook's new mini-feed, the Ticker, which lets you see a real-time stream of updates from your Facebook contacts.
Though Lee's tweet was swiftly deleted, Twitter user Mitchell Holder managed to capture a screenshot. (Click here to view the tweet.)
This presumably premature tweet came on the eve of F8, the huge Facebook developers conference in San Francisco at which Facebook is expected to announce several additional big changes to the website. "Listen with your friends" was rumored to be one of them; now this appears to be a lock. Facebook is widely expected to announce, among other things, new types of sharing buttons, so that users can share exactly what they are doing with their friends, be that listening to music, reading or watching video. AllThingsD predicts that f8 will usher in an "oversharing explosion." For now, these rumors sound like another attempt at Facebook's famous failed Project Beacon of 2007, which created a status update whenever a user bought something using a third-party website.
Facebook users have been reacting wildly against the new Facebook layout, which debuted earlier this week; F8 should only bring more changes and we will know what those changes are shortly.
Read on to find out how you can follow Facebook's f8 conference live at 1 p.m. ET (10 a.m. PT) on Thursday, September 22.
For a slideshow of some of the new features that might be unveiled at F8, scan through the slideshow (below). (This slideshow originally appeared here.)
