Netflix brings social recommendations to Android

Netflix has expanded the availability of its social recommendations to Android phones and smartwatches.

The streaming-video service's Social Recommendations feature is now available on the Netflix app for Android, the company announced Monday. The feature lets you make movie and TV recommendations privately to friends.

Netflix announced the feature in September, making it available on its website, Apple's iOS devices, game consoles and a variety of set-top boxes and smart TVs. Android, Google's mobile operating system, not being part of the initial launch was a conspicuous omission. At the time, Netflix said only that more support would be coming -- and it appears now that it has made good on that promise

The feature connects to your Facebook account and lets you send recommendations via Facebook messages. If your friends have already linked their Facebook accounts to Netflix, the recommendations are kept entirely in the Netflix universe. Whenever folks sign in to the video service, they'll see the social tips.

Netflix said at the time recommendations would be private and would not post to a person's News Feed. The company made the same privacy claim in its blog post on Monday.

To sweeten the pot for Android users, Netflix also added some extra features to social recommendations. For one, Android phone owners will find that their version takes advantage of the operating system's push notifications to include images and "action buttons" that allow users to instantly start watching a video, get more information on the recommendation, or thank the person recommending the item.

Netflix also integrated the feature with Android Wear, the operating system Google developed for wearable devices like smartwatches. Notifications will be automatically syndicated from an Android phone to an Android Wear smartwatch when people are using both devices.

Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.