Facebook, CNN reconnect for Obama State of the Union address

February 24, 2009 | Eric Eldon | Comments | |

Facebook’s Connect service — a service that lets other web sites integrate status updates and other features from Facebook into their own interfaces — seems to be gaining traction of late. And it should get an extra boost during President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union speech this evening. Cable news company CNN will be letting Facebook users comment on CNN’s live web video feed of the event.

Here’s how it works: Facebook users approve Connect integration on the CNN site or via CNN’s Facebook app. Then they can comment about the livestream using their Facebook status updates. Users can also comment on each others’ updates, and everything appears back in their Facebook profiles and news feeds, further driving traffic back and forth between Facebook and CNN.

Facebook and CNN offered this feature during Obama’s inauguration speech last month. Then, Facebook users generated more than 1.5 million status updates on the CNN feed — the single largest instance of Connect usage to date that I am aware of. The real-time conversation (and promotion that the CNN integration received within Facebook, and ahem, from other media outlets) also may have helped cause a spike in traffic to CNN’s site that day. Online publishers, including blogs and video sites, have also been busy using Connect since it was first introduced last fall — including an Israeli news portal, which tapped the service during that country’s elections earlier this month, and VentureBeat (see below).

The downside to CNN’s inauguration video streaming was that the video itself didn’t work very well for everyone. Tonight’s second time will be the charm, the broadcaster certainly hopes. You can join CNN’s Facebook group about today’s speech, here.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • saw a liar
    jindal the young phoney fake bullshitter
  • cool down, whomever you are -- all by a couple politicians are cut from the same cloth, and certainly any politician from IL or LA, as Obama and Jindal are, would be models of probity even if they lie as much as they do and will to play the game.
  • Theresa Shamanka
    It is my hope that President Obama and Vice President Biden will follow their higher instincts and use " power from within to influence" people and issues here at home and around the world . .. . which is what free, intelligent people do. And, that they will not follow the failed ideology of the past and use " power over to control" people and issues around the world . . . which is what fearful, narrow minded people do. Truly free and intelligent people never force or control each other in order to get others to believe they are right. Free, intelligent people ask to be heard . . . not just to be considered the only one who is right. We influence and inform each other . . . debate and discuss with each other . . . and we draw lines in the sand when we have to . . . but free people stand up for what they believe in rather than tear down what they do not understand. Just by being the real, down-to-earth, loving, intelligent, funny man he is . . . Obama has already changed the world without one shot being fired, one bat being swung in anger, one hateful statement being made. He IS a Statesman for the new century and will influence the world for the better for generations to come. He will be a leader in helping the world shift from managing corruption and death to cultivating sustainable commerce and life. . . because he will continue to follow the heartbeat of his higher self.
  • Just to be clear, I was posting about the CNN-Facebook Connect integration, not political issues.