Singing

Does Facebook have the X Factor?

Social media juggernaut Facebook is believed to be working on a ‘talent show’ feature for its mobile app that would allow its users to select their favourite songs to sing along to and then submit their recordings for a review.

Talent shows have long been a hit with the masses, with many different variations hitting our television screens, including The X Factor, The Voice and Britain’s Got Talent. Whether people fancy themselves as a judge and want to comment on the talent in front of them, or whether they just sit back and laugh at the dodgy auditions or are in awe of the show finalists, these shows are always a talking point on social media.

Back in 2016, we had a go at using Google Trends to predict the outcomes of both The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing based on searches surrounding the contestants. In this particular round of predictions, Google correctly predicted the contestant that was eliminated that week, although this proved to be a one-off as it predicted incorrectly the following week.

Now, Facebook has been found to be creating its own version of the popular singing show, which is known as TalentShow. Jane Manchun Wong, an engineer, first came across the development, which was picked up in the code of the app’s most recent version by reverse engineering the code.

Wong told Sky News that the TalentShow feature is still under development and would not be available for use until the company has officially launched it sometime in the future.

It is thought that the music available for users to sing along to has been made available as part of the same deal that saw Instagram introduce music stickers to its platform, which allows users to give a soundtrack to the Stories they post on the site.

However, while it is known that users will be able to sing a song and submit the recordings for review, it is not yet known who these auditions will be going to, and what the outcome of it all is. Maybe there is a £1m recording contract waiting for someone like on the X Factor, but more likely, it is just for fun.

The TalentShow feature would see users creating vertical videos as part of each audition, as this has been stressed as a mobile-friendly format by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to investors, although this was when he was referring to the new IGTV feature on Instagram.

When approached about the subject, a spokesperson on behalf of Facebook was unavailable to make a comment.

Alan Littler

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