Facebook Connect makes TV social with cnn live inaguaration

Today I remember my first TV watching experience in India when I was 9 and a neighbor bought the first tv in my entire neighborhood and invited everyone to their house on a Saturday evening to watch the one movie they showed in the only channel available.

Not long after, tv became a personal family affair with cable and 100s of channels and in my family now its a personal affair as we got rid of the box and watch hulu for what each of us want when we want! Its of course very social as we discuss Lost and Jon Steward and Seinfeld (nostalgically) with co-workers and friends.

This morning as all America woke up to an exciting day for the inauguration of President Obama, facebook took us to CNN.com live to show the live video stream along with a facebook connect feed.

A Screenshot of cnn live here






This allowed us to sign into cnn with our real identities and bring our real social graph to the site in a side bar to post our status and comment on our friends feeds sharing in the anticipation as we waited for Obama, revelled in beautiful music and poetry, fretted about how it felt to become free from the last 8 years of divisive politics, marvelled at Mrs.Obama's dress, took in the weight of the moment and let the promise of hope and optimism wash us.

Facebook had it setup privacy setting to let us decide to send each status update to go public to everyone and did you notice it allowed us to comment on only the ones made by our friends, all feeding into facebook feeds for rest of our friends to watch and join in.

It is not surprising to see the mindblowing Numbers From the Obama Inauguration - 600,000 status updates and 4000 comments/min and 14Mil of us viewing simultaneously by 1pm ET

Facebook Platform vs Facebook Connect

Facebook App Plaform excited me because of the power of the viral play and the entrepreneurial energy of developers. Facebook Connect takes the app platform out into the web (potentially into the desktop and mobile).

Facebook marketing has always been about delivering, building large scale support before a pr launch. Facebook is doing it again with Facebook Connect launching 1000 sites before we saw press coverage.

Facebook Connect Timeline

Launch @f8 July 23 followed by a garage Sep 29 2008	Luke's Q&A to Bay Area Facebook Meetup
Snap Summit03 Oct 2008 - Dave Morin's talk	How-to-add facebook connect to your blog in 8 min

Power of Facebook Connect

Cnn live of the Inauguration with Facbook Connect subtly shows the power of bringing your social graph for an event driven media consumption. As Don Thorson put it, "this is how all tv should be"

If you are have a web app or desktop app you have to tap into the power of facebook connect. Think - social commerce on web sites, and social influencer marketing for user generation and lots more to come building upon access to dynamic facebook user profiles! its a no brainer!