tv + facebook = good

Among my recent internet wanderings, another event that intrigued me was the CNN/Facebook live broadcasting of the inauguration activities this morning.

There’s nothing inherently new about chatting with others during a presentation – formally, webcasts & webinars have offered features like this for a while and informally through IM clients it’s a great way to have sidebar conversations on  conference calls.

What the CNN/Facebook implementation showed was that it can be a great way to experience television – finally a way to have ‘interactive tv.’  Sure, some of the comments were strange, obvious, or unnecessary.  But especially for a live event like this having a way to share in the excitement of the moment (especially since some of us had to be at work!) was pretty cool.

I’m not sure I’d appreciate the same pings from friends while watching a sitcom (does anyone watch those anymore?) but for certain events it definitely enhances the experience.

Another small point that I found interesting about they way they implemented it as well: rather than creating a new chat mechanism, they just leveraged their already-existing status updates.  This worked really well since everyone had a unique ‘chat’ window (no two people share exactly the same contacts).  It was also a way for them to roll out a new capability with no new ‘feature’ – just re-purpose something you’ve already got.

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