Christine Persaud

Through a new initiative and starting next month, Facebook members in Canada will be able to connect their social networking accounts with Netflix to share movie and TV watching information with Friends.

Announced at Facebook’s f8 event in San Francisco, CA, the service will actually launch in Canada and Latin America before anywhere else in the world. Oddly enough, the reason the U.S. is excluded from the launch is due to a 1980s law that “creates some confusion over our ability to allow U.S. members to share what they watch,” says Tom Willerer from the product team.

According to a blog post by Willerer, the idea with this collaboration is to help add a more social element to the Netflix streaming experience. Friends can discover new titles by seeing what their Friends watch, or communicate about a movie or TV show, fueled by this shared information.

Once the feature is enabled, an option will appear in the Netflix user interface to connect to Facebook. Then, details about what Facebook Friends are watching, regardless of the device they’re streaming on, will show up in Netflix, as long as they’re also online. Sharing can, of course, be turned off at any time.