Facebook is making it easier for news outlets such as BskyB, CNN and NBC
to integrate conversations from the social network into their
broadcasts. Using the Public Feed API, broadcasters are now able to
display a real-time feed of posts that contain a specific word.
Considering that, according to Facebook's own figures,
last week's kick-off of the new NFL season resulted in over 20 million
likes, comments and shares, that's a lot of data to be dealing with.
There is also the new Keyword Insights API which can be used to
determine how many posts mentioned a particular term in a specified
timeframe. But the API goes further than this, also making it possible
to filter results -- allegedly anonymously -- based on gender, age and
location. At the moment both of these APIs are only being made available
to a limited number of partners, but the list is certain to grow over
time.
For news shows looking to find new ways to interact with their audience,
this is a great announcement. Now, rather than just presenting viewers
with the news, programs can pontificate about how viewers from different
parts of the country feel about a given story. A lot of people like the
idea of hitting the headlines, but this is unlikely to be what they had
in mind.
What is interesting to note is that, as you'd probably guess from the
name, the Public Feed API can only be used to access public posts, but
no such limitations are mentioned in relation to the Keyword Insights
API.
The blog post that Facebook uses
to announce the new "feature" -- referred to, almost comically as
"tools for surfacing conversations" -- is also home to an interesting
little infographic that shows the number of Facebook interactions
generated by various TV programs.
So… what do you think? Should we have been expecting something like this
to happen? Does it seem like a reasonable implementation of Facebook's
terms of service? Anyone planning on storming away from the social
network in a stroppy protest?
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