For Facebook, “2013 Will Be The Year Of Music, Books, Fitness”

What’s going to be big on Facebook this year? Music, books and fitness, said Dan Rose, vice president of partnerships with Facebook. And in future years, perhaps Facebook will even give you a feed of what to watch on TV. Goodbye to the TV viewing “grid?”

Rose spoke today with Mike Issac at AllThingsD’s Dive Into Media conference. Some of the highlights:

Media & Identity

“Our identity platform can’t be complete without media as a part of it,” Rose said, saying that “our identities are tied to things like the movies we watch or the books we read.”

Great Media Deserves To Be Honored

Rose also said that Facebook tries to highlight good media content by looking for positive signals related to it, such as Likes and shares.

“We listen to the signal we get from people on Facebook telling us if the content they’re getting is valuable or not,” he explained.

Facebook doesn’t always get the signals right or fast enough, so it’s constantly trying to improve that. He added that great media content “deserves to be honored in the newsfeed” and mentioned how Facebook recently increased the size of pictures in the newsfeed as part of this.

The Next Big Thing: Books?

Asked what’s going to be big next on Facebook, Rose talked about how games were, then in 2011, the Like button was big for bringing in news content, then last year, “social media” was hot. As for this year, “2013 will be the year of music, books, fitness,” he said.

Talking more about books, he said, “Books are an interesting category. When you read a book, you’re investing five or ten hours of your life.” He went on to say that this is why people ask others they know for book recommendations and suggested that Facebook wanted to be much more a part of making those types of recommendations.

Facebook Catching Up With Mobile

Talking about mobile, he said that “Facebook has always been a mobile product” where people want to share on the move and consume “bite-size chunks”on the move. But, Facebook has only now been building an actual mobile product that matches how it has been viewed and used by Facebook users. “For us, it’s been about catching up to that.”

Instagram As The Second Screen?

Rose spoke to Facebook being used as a way people share about what they’re watching on TV, that Facebook is indeed a “second screen” viewed along with the first screen of TV. But, he counted Instagram as a second screen, too.

“Interestingly, Instagram is becoming a second screen for television,” he said, saying celebrities especially seems to use it this way.

Facebook As The New TV Grid?

Rose also talked about how people are used to deciding what to watch on TV by browsing a viewing grid. Facebook can potentially change that, he said.

“Imagine turning on your TV and seeing a feed of TV that your friends have watched,” he said.

In particular, he wasn’t seeming to suggest that you’d see what people were watching live, but instead, a more personalized “grid” powered by what those you know like.

When will this come? He gave no timeline but said, “we think we can play a big role in discovery.”

The Live Blog

Below, my live blogging of the event:

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.