Facebook adds lip syncing feature to Portal speakers

By most accounts, sales of Facebook’s Portal devices have been pretty dismal. Now, the company is turning to a familiar source on inspiration in an effort to boost sales ahead of the holidays: TikTok.

The company introduced a new, TikTok-like update to its Portal lineup called Mic Drop, a lip syncing feature that lets users sing along to popular music during video calls. 

Facebook introduced Mic Drop amid a slew of other updates to its camera-connected smart home devices. 

Mic Drop “lets you sing along with popular song clips and perform them on an AR stage during a call,” the company explains. If that sounds familiar, it might be because Facebook previously tested a lip syncing feature for Facebook’s Live called Lip Sync Live.

It’s not clear if Mic Drop will draw from the same music catalog as Lip Sync Live — the company has spent the last few years striking licensing deals with major labels — but the company says it will have songs from the Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, Coldplay, “and more.”

If that’s not enough to make you want a Portal speaker or a newer Portal TV, Facebook also added a number of other features meant to widen the smart home devices’ appeal.

Portal TV, the newest member of the Portal lineup, is getting support for Amazon Prime Video, Sling TV, and FandangoNOW as well as music streaming platform Deezer. 

Facebook is also finally adding two long-promised integrations: support for Facebook Workplace and WhatsApp login support, so Portal owners can make video calls without a Facebook account. The devices have previously supported calling via WhatsApp, but users were still required to have Facebook accounts in to order to set up the devices. 

Whether any of these updates will do much to win over many new users, though, is less clear. Though the actual hardware has some interesting features, like its “smart” camera system, the devices have been plagued by privacy concerns. 

Facebook has so far declined to share sales numbers for Portal, but outside reports suggest sales have been “very low.” (Facebook’s hardware chief Andrew Bosworth has said Portal sales are “very good,” but hasn’t given specifics.) 

The good news for anyone who does have a Portal, though, is that the company so far seems very committed to the hardware, regardless of how many non-Facebook employees are actually using it.