In the first half of 2013, Facebook has made a number of moves to improve its platform for entertainment and lifestyle applications.

New Timeline sections give users a place to save and display their favorite books, movies, TV shows and music. Developers can use new common Open Graph actions like “want to watch” and “want to read.” Users can share what they’re listening to, eating, feeling and more through structured status updates. Graph Search lets them find content and recommendations through friends and others. And a deal with Rovi gives Facebook a detailed database of information about movies, TV shows and celebrities

We spoke to Facebook Manager, Strategic Partnerships Ime Archibong about the new opportunities for entertainment apps on the platform, Facebook’s expanding role in content discovery, and how Open Graph can represent our offline activities and memories. The following is an edited transcript from that interview.

Inside Facebook: So it seems like a good time to talk to you now with the the new Timeline sections, News Feed and Graph Search all launched. Let’s start by talking about the state of Facebook’s entertainment platform.

Ime Archibong: I’m really excited about the suite of assets that are available for apps right now, in the entertainment space particularly and in the music space, which is one of the things I’m most excited about. You have things that are great for users. Take sections in the Timeline redesign that came out. Users now have a home for where their music consumption goes, and I’m pretty excited about that.

News Feed continues to be an important piece of distribution property for apps. With the redesign and the prominence of the music section coming out, that’s another huge asset. Graph Search. I think we’re still a ways away from where we’re going to go with Graph Search, but there’s no mystery that Open Graph actions will be showing up in Graph Search at some point, and that’s going to be a good source of traffic for these entertainment apps.

And I like what we’re doing in mobile right now. The new pages redesign is slick, it’s user-centric. If you think of that as a music artist’s home base in the Facebook ecosystem, and as we make it more engaging for users, it’s a good piece of real estate for artists themselves. I look at all these assets starting to stack up and how they come together and make us a meaningful distribution platform for these apps.
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As the new Timeline and News Feed rolls out to more users, Facebook is providing more ways for users to share stories about the books, movies, TV shows and music in their lives. This week we found ways for users to add movies to their “watched” or “want to watch” lists directly from News Feed. Users can also do the same for other content they find on friends’ profiles.

For example, when users see stories in News Feed about items friends have added to their Timeline, they can click a plus button in the corner of the item and select a list to add it to and who to share it with. This became available for music stories last week, and this week we saw it become part of movie-related stories, such as the one below.

These features encourage users to connect with more pages, which ultimately improves the social network’s ad targeting, search results, News Feed relevance and recommendations.

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Facebook has added a “Listen Later” button to Open Graph music stories in the feed, allowing users to fill out a new section of their About page.

The feature becomes available when users hover over a story about friend’s listening activity on Facebook-connected services like Spotify or Rdio. Users can click the small plus sign, which will bring up the “Listen Later” option and a way to adjust the privacy settings of the story. We have not seen examples of “Read Later” or “Watch Later” buttons in the feed, but these could be coming or already in testing, considering that the new About page also includes “Want to Watch” and “Want to Read” sections.

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When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted Graph Search in January, he explained it as being one of the three pillars of the social network. He sees Timeline, News Feed and Search as the primary ways users experience the Facebook graph and build new connections.

Timeline is the company’s reinvented approach to the profile, and Graph Search is a new take on how to navigate Facebook and discover things about your friends and the world. But News Feed, despite its many redesigns over the years, hasn’t had the sort of transformation that the other two pillars have seen in the past 18 months. That’s bound to change, perhaps even this year.

Not only is News Feed due for an overhaul, reports from Business Insider and TechCrunch support this notion. Business Insider heard from someone close to Facebook VP of Product Chris Cox, who is reportedly tasked with evolving the feed. TechCrunch got a peek at an unlaunched version of the Facebook mobile app that puts content into more immersive feeds organized by category.

As Zuckerberg often explains, the amount that people share on Facebook doubles each year, whether because of new features like location tagging, third-party apps like Spotify or the proliferation of connected devices. Combine that with the explosion of Facebook page marketing and advertising, and it’s clear that News Feed will have to evolve. At Facebook’s current state, more sharing either means a more crowded feed or a lot of information left out. Neither is ideal, so we could see the company address this by giving users more options to see what they want when they want it.
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Posts from music-related pages and new modules that recommend albums and concerts based on what users have listened to now appear in Facebook’s Music Feed.

The social networked launched a music dashboard at f8 last year. This section of the site offers users a feed of their friends’ listening activity, along with songs and albums that are trending among friends. Sometime this month Facebook started showing page posts and other modules in the feed. For example, if a user Likes an artist or a music venue, posts from those pages may be included among stories about what friends have listened to. Users may also see stories about the music pages their friends Like.

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Some Facebook users are seeing stories about upcoming events and recently released albums in their News Feeds, we’ve found.

The new stories are similar to the “upcoming concerts” module that some users began to see last month. Now, Facebook is suggesting some non-music events, as well, based on their location, pages they Like and friends’ plans. Previously these suggestions appeared on users’ event calendars but not in the feed. Users don’t typically visit their events page very often so they were less likely to discover these options. As long as the recommendations are relevant, users may welcome seeing suggested events in News Feed.

A new music-related module highlights a recently released album by an artist that a user has listened to on Spotify. Users can click to begin streaming the album through Spotify. It is unclear whether Facebook is offering the same feature for Rdio users.

[Update 12/6/12 -  We've now seen the recently released albums feature directing users to Myspace. The module now also includes a link to Like the artist's page on Facebook.]

News Feed has always been a place to see stories and activities from friends and pages users have explicitly connected to, but these modules show how Facebook can use Open Graph data and other cues to generate new types of stories. We may begin to see more News Feed items like this, which do not come directly from a user’s friend but might be interesting to users. Trending articles and trending videos were an early example that seemed less personalized, but for example, Facebook could let users know about a new movie opening this weekend if the user watched a trailer for the new release or likes a similar film.

Another benefit of these types of stories that don’t come directly as the result of a user’s friend taking an action or making a post is that they lend themselves well to sponsorship. Upcoming events, recently released albums, the hypothetical movie module or other similar features could easily be options for ads in the future. If Facebook moves toward a feed with these algorithmically generated stories — as opposed to straight friend activity and page posts — new ad units will feel more native. For instance, there could be a “Happy Hour” module for bars and restaurants or “Ongoing Sales” for retailers or online stores. Businesses could pay to be featured among other organic recommendations.

For now, the upcoming events and recently released albums modules are not sponsored. Facebook is likely gauging how interested users are in seeing these types of stories by how frequently they click through. There is not a way for users to provide direct negative feedback on the units, such as hiding them or marking them as spam.

Some Facebook users are seeing a new “Upcoming Concerts” story in their feeds. The feature seems to suggest nearby music events based on a user’s interests, listening activity and friend connections.

It is unclear whether Facebook is testing other recommended event stories or if this is limited to music for now. Either way, this is another example of how Facebook can leverage data beyond the social graph, and help people discover things based on their interests and location. As users Like more pages, add location to their posts and use new Open Graph applications, Facebook can provide interesting and relevant recommendations for a number of categories.

Nearly a year ago Facebook began testing “Suggested Events,” a list of recommendations based on pages users Like, places they’ve been and actions they’ve taken in Open Graph apps. When the company redesigned the events product this summer, suggested events began appearing directly on users’ calendars rather than on a separate page accessed through a sub-navigation menu. Even still, users don’t typically visit their events page every day so they might not discover these options. As long as the recommendations are relevant, users may welcome seeing suggested events in News Feed.

Besides the new upcoming concerts feature in the feed, Facebook has other music discovery features. The music dashboard launched last year at f8 lets users know what songs and artists are popular among their friends. Recently, it also began highlighting music that is similar to other artists users have listened to.

Thanks to Tom Waddington for the tip and the screenshot of Upcoming Concerts.

Music technology company BandPage, which was previously focused on Facebook tab development, today announced BandPage Everywhere to bring Facebook integration and other key features to all of an artist’s sites across the web.

BandPage Everywhere allows musicians to update their bio, music tracks, photo gallery, tour dates and videos from one central place and then have it update on a number of other sites. Additionally, the app integrates Facebook Open Graph so users can RSVP to events and favorite certain songs, and those actions will be shared back to the social network, even if they are taken on off-Facebook. This adds a social layer that many musicians would be unlikely to implement on their own.

BandPage was one of the first page app developers to integrate Open Graph and allow automatic sharing to Timeline. We thought this might help the app maintain engagement after the default landing tab option was removed from pages, but it turns out it wasn’t enough. As we wrote about earlier this week, page owners and developers who do not actively promote their page tabs have seen an extreme drop-off in monthly active users. BandPage in particular lost more than 90 percent of its traffic, according to our AppData tracking service. This left the developer in a vulnerable position following a $16 million Series B round of funding last August that had been primarily driven by the massive reach the company seemed to have.

Now BandPage hopes to recover by expanding beyond Facebook and providing musicians with an easy way to maintain their presence across different sites. We’d like to see the company introduce more custom Open Graph actions to allow users to share what songs they listen to, videos they watch and other activity back to Facebook. BandPage should also consider making more mobile-optimized experiences.

More about the new BandPage Everywhere extensions is available here.

Some artists’ Facebook pages now include an option for fans to search for and share Spotify links to their favorite songs, as well as a way for users to see which songs, videos and news stories related to an artist are trending on the social network.

When users visit an artist’s page, they can click “music” from the publisher and search for a song by that artist. A link to Spotify will appear and users can say something about the link before posting it publicly to the page. This seems aimed at helping fans express themselves to their favorite artists, as many users often post links to YouTube videos of an artist’s songs to show their support. The new feature makes it easier for users to reference a particular song, while encouraging use of Spotify over YouTube. Ultimately, the feature could search across Vevo and other Facebook-connected services besides Spotify.

For now this option is available on pages that are linked with a Spotify artist and that allow fans to post on the page. For example, pages for Rihanna and Eminem do not allow fans to write on their Wall so there is no option to share music either. Some users have also seen the music feature above News Feed, allowing them to easily share songs with friends.

Another feature we recently noticed on artist pages is a module that includes the number of total Spotify plays for five of an artist’s most popular songs. When users first visit an artist page, they will see which songs are popular among their friends, but when filtering Timeline by “posts by others,” they will see total plays among all users.

In that same “posts by others” view are modules showing the top videos and top articles about an artist. This information is pulled from Open Graph-enabled apps like Vevo, Viddy, Yahoo and Washington Post Social Reader. These modules are interesting for people who visit the page, but they could also be useful for artists to understand which channels their fans — or potential fans — are most active on.

[Update 7/10/12 2:50 p.m. PT - These video and news modules are also available on fan pages for brands, public figures and other entities on Facebook.]

[Update 7/10/12 4:49 p.m. PT - Facebook engineer Alejandro Marcu, who works on pages, tells us these modules were added to pages on June. 15.]

Facebook pages are becoming increasingly rich destinations for artists to connect with fans and for users to discover new music. In April, Facebook added a listen button to artist pages, allowing users to get an instant sample of an artist’s music. With Timeline, artists can tell their story dating back before Facebook, making these pages useful for sharing an artist’s discography and important biographical events. Facebook pages could be an even stronger hub for artists if they also included modules about popular shows or concerts featuring that artist. This module could pull information from Facebook events, Ticketmaster, StubHub and other ticketing services that integrate Open Graph. Users should be able to see which shows their friends had been to, as well as which events were most popular overall.

Facebook shares are back above $30 for the first time since May, closing today at $30.01 — up 6 percent from Thursday.

Earlier today Facebook filed a motion to consolidate the 40-plus class-action lawsuits against the company following its initial public offering. The filing claims the company did nothing wrong in the weeks leading up to the IPO and suggested that Nasdaq’s technical issues on the first day of trading “created market uncertainty and caused investor losses.” Earlier this week, a Texas court rejected a petition seeking documents and oral dispositions from top Facebook executives to determine if the company defrauded investors.

It’s unclear whether the post-market-close announcement that CTO Bret Taylor would leave the company will affect the company’s stock price on Monday. Shares were down slightly in after-hours trading.

In other Facebook-related news this week:

Facebook joins alliance to fight ‘bad ads’ — Facebook joined Google, Twitter and AOL in an alliance this week against ads that deliver malware, direct users to scams or try to sell counterfeit goods. The alliance will develop industry policy recommendations and best practices, as well as share information about “bad actors” who might try to advertise on a new network after being shut down by another.

App Center now available on iPad — The Facebook App Center is now available to some iPad users as part of the social network’s gradual rollout of the new dashboard. The App Center is available on the web and mobile devices to help users discover new Facebook-integrated applications.

Facebook completely open sources Ringmark — The social network announced on Thursday that its mobile browser test suite, Ringmark, is now completely open source. Facebook has also added drawing performance tests to the Ringmark repository to help game developers and others test a mobile browser’s animation speed.

GraphEffect raises $12M — Social marketing and advertising collaboration platform GraphEffect announced Wednesday that it secured $12 million in financing. The platform, which builds upon the Facebook Ads and Insights APIs, recently added a “story manager” feature to help users understand how their posts are performing and then easily turn those into promoted units. GraphEffect can also now deliver ads within News Feed and mobile devices. CEO and co-founder James Borow says the company has more features in the works, including a full page publishing tool.

AdParlor to give job offer to future winner of Facebook Hackathon — Facebook ad optimization company AdParlor has promised to make a job offer to whoever wins the Facebook Hack in Toronto on Saturday. The winner will also get a new iPad.

Facebook tests ‘share music’ feature – Some Facebook users are seeing a “share music” option in their News Feed publisher, The Next Web reports. Users can search for songs and share Spotify streaming links with friends.