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    Foursquare, Vevo, Fandango, and The Onion launch new Facebook Timeline apps

    Foursquare, Vevo, Fandango, and The Onion launch new Facebook Timeline apps

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    Facebook just announced a few high-profile additions to its roster of Timeline apps: Foursquare, Vevo, Fandango, The Onion, Viddy, Endomondo, and RootMusic all have new ways to share what you're doing with your friends.

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    Vevo Social On
    Vevo Social On

    Facebook just announced a few high-profile additions to its roster of Timeline apps: Foursquare, Vevo, Fandango, The Onion, Viddy, Endomondo, and RootMusic all have new ways to share what you're doing with your friends. That's seven more major apps in a flood of nearly 3,000 Timeline apps Facebook says have launched in the past two months — and that number will continue to grow as Facebook users finish the transition to Timeline over the course of the next few weeks. While most of the apps are what you'd expect ("Josh read an article on The Onion," or "Josh ran two miles on Endomondo," there are a couple wrinkles in the mix.

    The Vevo app handles sharing in a novel way: there's a prominent new "Social On" button on the Vevo site that'll share videos to your profile as you watch them. That's a bit different than other Timeline apps like Spotify, which bury the sharing setting and default to sharing everything — it's clear that Vevo expects users to flip the switch quite often. Vevo's ties to Facebook appear to be deepening as the music video service pulls away from its YouTube deal; expect to see much more from this pair in the future.

    Foursquare is another big addition since it builds heavily on its already-popular Facebook integration with new location, friend tagging, and photo features that tie the service even more closely to Facebook. No longer will Foursquare check-ins inhabit boring little boxes. Using new APIs Facebook rolled out last week, Foursquare stories in your Timeline will feature links to Facebook friends, places, and even photos. More broadly, the new APIs even let you see friends on a map regardless of which check-in app they're using.

    Facebook is planning a big push behind the new wave of Timeline apps. "Something that's huge for us this year is high quality apps," a Facebook spokesperson told us. "We're focused on getting the right apps in front of the right people." How Facebook will get apps in front of people is another question, though the site's News Ticker makes an action like listening to a song especially obvious. If you watch a video on VEVO or a trailer on Fandango, these actions too will now post to the News Ticker.

    On a side note, Facebook spokesperson Malorie Lucich hinted that "a lot of engineers" are currently working on major music service aggregation that would create one consolidated "Music" page to let you see what songs your friends are listening to across all music apps tied in to Facebook. For example, the Music page would include songs friends recently listened to on Spotify, Rdio, MOG, SoundCloud, and more.

    New music features like these would perfectly parallel Facebook's efforts to make tagging friends universal across all apps like Foursquare and Instagram. With music, all songs could have their own Facebook links, and Artist links could direct back to any artist's Facebook page.

    These apps mark the beginning of a new wave of Timeline apps that tie in more closely with content instead of just posting stories and links to a user's Facebook page.

    Facebook Timeline apps from Foursquare, Vevo, and Fandango

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