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CNN, Facebook Win With Combined Coverage

Many of you probably watched yesterday's inauguration online, and for those who watched it on CNN.com, you probably noticed that next to the video player, you could see the Facebook status updates of those watching being streamed in the sidebar. And many of you probably turned this feature off.

Facebook Connect, the social networking giant's new platform for bringing your identity with you to other Web sites, powered this integration of Facebook and CNN.com Live. For Web sites that use Facebook Connect, visitors can easily log in using their Facebook account information and interact with the site as if they were on Facebook. "Besides simply being convenient," says Read Write Web's Sarah Perez, Facebook Connect "allows people to log on as their 'real' selves, a trend that perhaps speaks to the beginning of the end of online anonymity."

Perez adds that Facebook Connect will have received an enormous boost by being part of CNN.com Live's coverage of President Barack Obama's inauguration. "In the end, not only did Facebook Connect provide an interactive look into the thoughts and feelings of all those watching CNN's coverage via the web -- it did so without crashing." According to the official stats from yesterday's coverage, there were 200,000+ status updates, which translates to 3,000 people commenting on the Facebook/CNN feed per minute. Right before Obama spoke, that number grew to 8,500. CNN, meanwhile, broke its daily streaming record, set last year on Election Day, delivering 5.3 million streams.

Read the whole story at Read Write Web »

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