Earlier yesterday while stumbling across an article on the CNN Money site, I noticed that the comments were now exclusively powered through Facebook Connect. While there are no signs that this will become a broader trend for all of CNN, this is definitely a major move for one of the worlds largest global news organizations. One interesting thing to note is that this is for articles that previously didn’t have an embedded commenting feature.
While CNN’s blogs are not currently powered by Facebook Connect, it’s a big shift for any section of CNN to add commenting to news articles which traditionally didn’t have any platform for discussion to take place. It’s also interesting that CNN, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, is using Facebook Connect as the commenting platform of choice for one of their divisions and opting out of collecting names and email addresses.
Not having access to a user’s email is the primary downside of using Facebook Connect. While you can still send out emails through Facebook’s API, do you want to rely on Facebook as the backbone of your email marketing strategy? Perhaps email marketing is not one of the goals of media companies that are looking to offer commenting functionality to users. As many webmasters who have implemented Facebook Connect have noted, overall engagement levels on the site tend to increase as soon as Connect features are enabled.
Whether it’s the user staying on the site longer or more people commenting, leveraging Facebook Connect clearly has benefits. Perhaps that’s why CNN Money has chosen to make their commenting exclusively powered by Facebook Connect. Whatever the rationale, this is a significant statement by CNN, and it reflects positively upon Facebook who has built a tight relationship with the massive news conglomerate.
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Do you have an example of this? Didn't find, when poking around CNN Money.
Comment by Dorian Benkoil — August 17, 2009 @ 6:33 am
Dorian, any article that you view will have it … Scroll down to the bottom of this article for example: http://bit.ly/zkGwR
Comment by Nick ONeill — August 17, 2009 @ 6:40 am
This is really interesting, we have a site that only uses FB Connect (http://girlsguideto.com) but this is the first that I have seen so much reliance on FB in the mainstream – good find Nick.
Comment by Facebook User — August 17, 2009 @ 8:51 am
Perfect, mostly effective social media implementation – specifically FB's. Good luck!
Comment by Alla Gringaus — August 26, 2009 @ 8:18 pm
Robert English The more that individuals and families have ,like $150.000 per adult, suggested by myself,Would help out all of us.Again we can bail our self out! with our own tax money.It is our money right?We are we the people right?Let the banks come to us.The credit card co. come to us.Let us ,THIS UNITED STATES OF THIS AMERICAN HELP OUR SELF OUT.We know what we need.Just ASK us.
Comment by Robert English — March 28, 2010 @ 9:30 am