Netflix are poised to introduce new social sharing features to US-based customers next year, just days after a Senate bill passed which allowed them to do so.

The company will begin pushing out the new feature in 2013 after the bill is signed into law by now second-term President Obama. For a while now, Netflix has let customers in Canada and Latin America to post what shows they're watching through Facebook's "frictionless sharing", which is the same method used to share what music they're listening to, or what they're reading.

It was only until that bill was passed that the Video Privacy Protection Act blocked Netflix from such social sharing features for video, as it was illegal. The new bill was passed by the House of Representatives, and then approved by the Senate, and has amended the VPPA so that customers can opt into sharing their video data using online means instead of requiring written consent.