ABCNews.com Connects with Facebook During Michael Jackson Memorial
EmailIf Charles Caleb Colton was right, then a certain web news competitor should be flattered.
No, we can’t claim to be the first to implement the super-cool technology known as Facebook Connect (that honor – and a tip of our technological cap – goes to CNN.com) but ever since we saw their nifty Inauguration coverage, we’ve been itching to take Facebook’s widget for a spin.
The international event known as Michael Jackson’s memorial service provided just such a chance – and the results, if we do say so ourselves, were more than satisfactory.
We began live streaming the funeral motorcade with an eye-in-the-sky from our affiliate KABC at 11am ET / 8am PT. And right next to the live stream sat our Facebook Connect widget, which immediately drew user interest to our special Michael Jackson section of the site.
At Noon ET, as the official Staples Center memorial service drew closer, we switched to four hours of live streaming coverage of our digital broadband channel ABC News Now and added a second, slightly shorter (hey, Home Page real estate is tight) Facebook Connect widget to the Home Page of ABCNews.com.
Here’s how Facebook Connect looked on the Home Page of ABCNews.com:
And here’s how it look on the Michael Jackson subsection:
The results were fascinating.
According to Facebook, we hosted nearly 100,000 users, sending almost 50,000 status updates. Not bad, we thought, considering we didn’t do any advance promotion (we figured it was better to have a successful experiment than overpromise and under-deliver – but next time, we pledge to boast long in advance).
It’s a testament to Facebook’s global influence – since the King of Pop’s passing, he’s quickly become the #1 most popular figure on the social networking site with over 7 million fans of his official page.
We saw updates from Japan to England, and, of course, all across the United States. Facebook has truly become the global meeting grounds – a community to connect instantly with friends, colleagues and, with innovations such as Facebook Connect, those with a common cause or experience.
“I love how there are so many people around the world watching this and commenting on here,” remarked Stephanie Eiseman from Orange County, California.
“Man, seriously, this is awesome, how cool is it that they have Facebook running along side of the live remembering michael jackson broadcast…. way to go Facebook and ABC,” said the status of one Jonathan Kyle Lara of Houston, Texas.
Seriously. We couldn’t make this stuff up.
And, while we enjoyed such compliments, a vast majority of the comments were thoughtful remembrances of a lost legend; it was a sad day for Michael Jackson fans everywhere but it was also a good day for the web.
Our sincere thanks to those who came to ABCNews.com to be a part of a communal conversation and shared experience facilitated by the ever-impressive technology of the web.
–Ed O’Keefe, Senior Producer, Special Projects & Innovation, ABCNews.com
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Congratulations to this successful cooperation. It’s good to see that classic media can stop crying and flaming on the web / social media (like it’s in almost every discussion here in Germany). Instead you showed that both can coexist very well, if just both parties tear down old habits (“That user belongs to me, why should i offer him a competitors login form?”). Hope to see more success stories like this one :)
Posted by: Hendrik | July 9, 2009, 4:08 am 4:08 am
What happened to the “what I’ve been talking about” link from “post a comment.” It seems thou taketh away more than thou have given! Is the root cause — abc is the victim of a cyberattack? ABC is broke — can’t afford to maintain the data files and support technology? or ABCs s administrator is on sabbatical? or __________(you tell us)! Sure you added something — but you took something important away.
Posted by: wisdom | July 10, 2009, 6:22 pm 6:22 pm
Hey –Ed O’Keefe, Senior Producer, Special Projects & Innovation — we all appreciate the systems integration issues you’ve overcome to use the live feed from facebook — but what we like more is perusing comments made by other people posting beneath a story and seeing how an individual responds to diverse stories — (with the context of a poster’s personality). Since this link seems to have been disabled for all people posting comments — and assuming no body has directly reported it to you — would you use your innovation team to innovate! Put the link back on line.
Thank you in advance for your kind and prompt consideration (i.e., enabling the links once again).
Posted by: Integration | July 10, 2009, 6:30 pm 6:30 pm
#1. Charles Caleb Colton was born in 1780 – and died 1832. And while 177 years ago — imitation could have been a sincere form of flattery when it came to farming methods or how to build a field stone house — today — in the world of writing it’s called plagiarism. Colton is often held up by scholars as an example of someone often quoted, yet rarely understood. Perhaps you meant to emulate him – other than that I can find no reason for him being included in this story.
Posted by: Look It Up in theEncycopedia | July 10, 2009, 6:42 pm 6:42 pm