Among my recent internet wanderings, another event that intrigued me was the CNN\/Facebook live broadcasting of the inauguration activities this morning.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 conference calls.<\/p>\n
What the CNN\/Facebook implementation showed was that it can be a great way to experience television – finally a way to have ‘interactive tv.’\u00a0 Sure, some of the comments were strange, obvious, or unnecessary.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 This worked really well since everyone had a unique ‘chat’ window (no two people share exactly the same contacts).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … <\/p>\n