I'm on Facebook/CNN too. This is amazing! Of course my connection keeps cutting out which will NOT work for me during Obama's speech - I might still have to find a TV for that.

Where do we go from here? We need to either bring our education systems into the 1990s and beyond because many of them don't allow FaceBook access in their schools or even in their administration buildings.

The move by CNN to use FB as a partner in this historic moment is great. But by doing so they effectively locked out the youth of America and the educators of our children.

According to a few school administrators I know, most of the Commonwealth's IT infrastructure (including firewalls) are managed by one firm that cannot - or has not been able to - respond to the needs of its clients.

It's pretty sad that kids in the majority of schools won't be able to see this live because of an ironic lack of education in our school systems and a lack of forethought on CNN's part.

Just my $.02

I'm CNN.com'ing it. But I had to shrink the window. The Facebook feed was both annoying and distracting.

I tried at 11:00 but couldn't due to the number of users trying to get on. That saddens me that we can't account for the number of people who are going to want to watch it. However, the fact that we (some) can, is truly remarkable.

Ha! Thanks for the speedyplug for http://matthewebel.com C.C., I appreciate it. Now it's time for me to get a latté and get back to work!

Pax,
Matthew
--
http://matthewebel.com
http://matthewebel.net

I thought the CNN/Facebook integration was great, but I kept wishing it was CNN/Twitter integration. To me that stream of conversation would have made more sense than constantly updating your Facebook status. Now I'm wishing for Twitter integration for every site I can imagine!

pretty neat, though I wonder about the famous echo chamber... if all the commentary we hear is from people we already know, we'll get a closed view of things.

not that that's not the case in cable news at least, but it seems to me that for a healthy public sphere we, er, media hacks need to think about how we can keep encouraging people to understand the views of people we don't agree with, rather than just, more or less, despising and dismissing them.

CC,

Just thought I would point you towards the developer that made this happen. His name is John C. Bland II (http://www.johncblandii.com/). This is info. coming down from Sarge Sargent, Technical Acct Mgr/Flash Media Server div. at Adobe, Inc.

Brandon

Hugh, you raised a very good point and it is something I think they took into consideration because with one click you could watch the entire stream of conversation that was happening beyond just your friends. That was certainly drinking from a fire hose, but it was amazing to see the variety of comments happening from around the globe right there on the screen.

Great to see you so enthusiastic about this, it was certainly a good day.

CC: Oddly enough, I wrote a whole post about Twitter vs Facebook and open vs closed yesterday, wondering why Facebook didn't use the Status Update feature to launch a rival to Twitter. ( http://is.gd/gwPW )

If we take into account the huge number of people over 30 who are discovering social media via Facebook and their complete lack of desire to interact with strangers (which is in many ways the allure of Twitter) then it seems obvious that Facebook should take this route.

And it looks like they did.

Hugh is correct that it creates an echo chamber - the ability to avoid that is one of the nice things about Twitter for *marketers.* For the average Joe though, the ability to only talk to their friends, is probably a huge selling point.

Yes! Oh my, C.C.! I thought of the idea of having a Twitter feed on a TV during an episode of Heroes, LOST, etc back on a video I did in October.

I love this idea so much! The ability to have it optional is killer, too!

Ahhhh! I can't wait for it! :)

Congratulations on the CNN gig! Will you embed it on your site too? I hardly ever watch TV live (as mentioned in my video).

Hi CC, you are so right. I'm so excited, because we haven't even experienced yet, how nice and slick everything will get over the next decade. When I first saw Joost, I thought it was amazing. I was hoping that the world of advertising would change (and it certainly will). There will be a day that advertising will not be those pesky interruptions anymore. But how about being able to click on the sunglasses that Jack Bauer is wearing, because I like them and I can buy them right there. I was also freaking out when Tom Green first started broadcasting his own channel from home, and kicking TV networks derriers.

What I'm even more excited about: Computers will become virtually unnoticeable and transperent. Well, we know that they are running it, but we will not be noticing them anymore. I don't care if my remote control is a computer, or my TV, or my fridge, as long as it does exactly what it is meant to do.

Peace out, the world took a deep breath today! :-)

Hans

When you muted the CNN Live feed and watched it on the big screen, did you stick to CNN or were you like me (along the lines of Hugh's comment above) and watched C-SPAN so I could make my own commentary?

You've never seen MTV TRL with live comments on the screen for the past 8 years? Yeah this is a bit different for mainstream media-tainment, and it's all been done before, but it's never stuck. It's not the technology, it's the audience that's growing into the technology. And hacks like you ;) who are savvy enough to take advantage of the "old guard" - who will do what you tell them, since they have no mold to follow.

Hey CC,
Man, you were all over this. Way to get this posted before the swearing in even happened. I included your post in my own write up of Current and CNN/Facebook coverage (http://discobeta.com/2009/01/20/change-has-come/). I did have to step away and watch CNN without social media commentary to better digest the speech, but I agree that TV as we know it has been put on notice.

Adam

I just caught your piece on CNN.com and I'm listening to you talk to them now. Your enthusiasm is infectious. :-)

I agree that it was a well-presented format of an incredible day. But I have to agree with a commenter above that I much would have preferred a CNN/Twitter integration.

Rolling Stone, CNN....
Obama better watch his back. I'm picturing President Chapman in our not-so-distant future.

:-) Great work C.C.

Cheers,
Dave

Couple more thoughts after a little reflection (but first a hearty congrats on CNN picking you up.)

1. Does this replace TV or is it just the natural evolution of television? TV being delivered via the internet is not a new notion after all.

2. Does CNN/FB integration have any value to people not sitting by themselves? In other words, if you were in a room with friends or family, would you sit there typing responses. Or would you be talking to each other?

While, yes, this is really neat and fun and has a lot of possibilities, this is by no means the death-nail for TV.

The integration of streaming video and social networking is definitely a boon for the Internet, but there are a couple of things to consider.

1.) bandwith. will sites have enough bandwith to incorporate this type of 'viewing'?

2.) need. while i think it will be more popular at the office, there is no need for it at home. the living room area, where the family congregates to watch tv, is set up around the television. the computer, on the other hand, is usually in a separate room; an office, a den, etc. since our social habits in the living are set up around a tv, it will be difficult getting the cultural consciousness to move from tv to internet. that said, i agree w/you that if there is an integrated functionality on my tv for my computer, it would open more avenues for me to sit on my rump and get fatter.

oh, i do enjoy your blog

josh

CC

I grudgingly re-tweeted this because it's a smart post, despite being about the competition. Media companies who give people smart, easy tools to join a live national dialogue will be the winners.

Best to you on '09 bro!

Jim

We'll remember 1/20/09 in other ways now. I agree. Revolutionary. Forward thinking. All of those things. TV needs to start thinking about how they move from the "idiot box" over to the place where the eyeballs are or they will be talking about shuttering after 60 years like newspapers that are closing their printing press. Exciting stuff, unless you are in that other business.

Like everyone else, CONGRATS on the CNN piece!
So glad for you, man!
It was a HUGE day, and you played a part! You've broken much ground, and continue to do so...I'm eager to see what comes :)
But, I have to say, selfishly, if you ever need a place to stay in DC, you know you can room with us!
PV

To be fair, Cnn.com/live has been around for a while, and is usually not the same as the normal CNN feed.

The implication with the facebook statuses was great, although I think a chat-room enviroment would have worked better. Something basecamp-ish.

I actually did not like the FB integration. I was at work and brought up CNN to watch the live streaming. My FB account was there to show anyone at work who my friends are and what they were saying, without even giving me a choice to choose if I wanted it displayed. I then switched to Fox News and watched the stream from there.

I don't think anything my friends were saying was unprofessional, but I still like to choose when I want to share my life stream with others.

I had the same epiphany yesterday. I assumed I'd want to leave my office to go to be with some co-workers in front of a big TV, but once I got onto the CNN.com Live w/ FB integration feed, I was hooked & didn't leave. I loved watching live TV with my friends all over the country, and saw this "non-Twitter crowd" turn into a Twitter-like experience. I actually shut down TweetDeck and solely followed the FB feed of my friends. It was an awesome experience -- game changing is right!

Great post! I think it's a very very early evolution of the TV. I suspect the next step will be enabling live chat and Social Networking tools (non-Web) inside the Cable TV system. Te current DVR box will be more and more "interactive" as it's currently passive, but will become active...which makes me wonder if that means yet another "closed" network?

I watched on my 53" TV with surround sound on..I really wanted to absorb the whole thing in a big way..was gonna Tweet but just got swept up!

Another grudging acknowledgment from another media competitor. The reality is that it doesn't even take a financial commitment to do this. You can do it with free stuff (Mogulus, CoverItLive, a Twitter group, etc,) - you just don't get the seamless integration. Which, I grant, is a major part of it. We ran a Mogulus stream with a live blog and a CoverItLive chat on a single page... and it worked, well, OK.

To Alan - the big limitation is that until we learn how to effectively take in multiple audio and visuals at once, text is the most digestible medium. But there is value in sharing the group's thoughts - maybe your group wants to see what your friends on the other coast are thinking?

Beyond that - I agree with what Jim says and add absolutely nothing.

From Cynopsis Digital: Combining live television with the interactivity of the web proved to be a powerful lure for two major media and web brands yesterday. CNN.com's live streaming application, which was accompanied by a Facebook widget that allowed members to view comments from their peanut gallery of friends, set web traffic records yesterday serving a total of 18.8 million total online viewers as of 1 pm ET. (This shattered CNN's previous record of 5.3 million streams set on Election Day.) CNN served more than 1.3 million concurrent live streams just as President Obama began his address. This nearly doubled the streaming output of YouTube Live back in November of approximately 700,000 concurrent viewers as measured by Akamai, believed to be the previous industry high water mark. Facebook averaged more than 4,000 status updates per hour Tuesday morning, peaking at 8,500 updates/minute during the President's speech. Meanwhile Twitter, which survived without any major outages, saw 5x its normal tweet rate.

What an awesome video, and congrats to you for making it on to CNN too! And thanks for wearing our client's 01.20.09 T-shirt (www.bushslastday.com).. I called him last night to point the video out to him. What a hoot!

We linked to both your blog post and the CNN video on his news page this morning.

Great video, and I agree, it's changing things. My wife and I don't even watch TV anymore. We do it all on our computers.