Facebook users have shared 5 billion listening activities

Four months ago, at its 2011 f8 developer conference, Facebook announced an update to its Facebook Platform that focused on supporting multiple companies offering similar services, including streaming music. In the six weeks that followed, Facebook users shared their listening activity more than 1.5 billion times with their friends using the Open Graph music apps. These are updates that can be seen in the Ticker and in the new Timeline profile. Now, that number is at 5 billion.

Facebook says users in 50 countries have shared more than 5 billion songs in the last 16 weeks. Facebook's vice president of partnerships Dan Rose revealed the new statistic at the music industry conference Midem in Cannes, France, according to TNW. He also noted that more often than not, lesser-known bands show up in the Top 100 of most-shared songs.

Growth like this isn't too big of a surprise: many know the advantages of leveraging Facebook with its 800 million active users. Still, I'm sure Facebook and its partners are happy, although both will undoubtedly be looking to see whether or not the numbers continue to rise. Some basic math shows that the initial uptake has already slowed: if it were constant, users would have share 6 billion listening activities.

I expect a couple things to happen with the new Facebook music apps. At some point, the social networking giant is going to cut down on promoting listening activity and focus on something else. This will probably occur once music apps have hit a certain level of popularity. At the same time, some music apps are going to fall by the wayside. Right now there are tons of them, and I think the market will end up having to pick just two or three winners.

See also:

• Facebook now lets you listen to music with friends
• Facebook wants to power Vevo, replacing YouTube (rumor)
• Facebook kills official Music Player and Discography apps
• Sean Parker: use Facebook to make Spotify the next Napster
• Spotify bug kept sharing music on Facebook even after opting out
• Spotify defends new Facebook requirement