Why Facebook Spent a Year Learning to Listen in on Your TV Shows | Business | WIRED
According to the company, the accuracy is high enough that Facebook will sometimes make suggestions even before you’ve told it what kind of media you’re looking for. “What we ended up doing is providing this flow where it works from the top level,” says Facebook software engineer Ryan Case. “You could be just typing about what you’re watching and we give an indication we have a suggestion for you, and you can step into the suggestion.”
The system also grabs more detailed information about what you’re doing. When people were inputing TV shows manually, Facebook didn’t ask them which season and episode they were viewing. That would be too much of a burden. Now, that data is included automatically. Previously, music data was limited to a particular band. Now, Facebook shows the specific track and album and includes a 30-second clip.