Facebook and CNN

Almost everyone in the US today has a Facebook account. In fact, Facebook boasts over 500 million active users worldwide. According to Facebook, people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. With the great reach Facebook has, it’s no wonder news media is using the social networking site as a tool to expand their online services.
One thing I’ve noticed recently on the CNN website is a Facebook “social plug in.” This allows a website visitor to connect his or her online news activity with Facebook. Users can “share” an article with friends, so they will be notified about what articles the user finds particularly interesting or are currently reading. CNN explains the plug in, “Using Facebook, you can now see what your friends are recommending and sharing on CNN.” CNN visitors are automatically logged in through their Facebook account even if they don’t have an account on CNN.com.
The plug in is easy to use. At the bottom of each news article, there’s an option to “Recommend”, accompanied with the familiar Facebook thumbs up and logo. It also reports how many people have recommended that particular article so far.
CNN also has its own Facebook page and encourages site visitors to “Like” the CNN Facebook page. The Facebook page shares short updates with the day’s top news stories and links to the full articles on the CNN website. Through this Facebook page, Facebook users can comment or “Like” certain news topics. The Facebook Page has almost a million fans. It also has links to other CNN Facebook pages including those to CNN anchors such as Ali Velshi and Rick Sanchez, and CNN programs like BackStory, Anderson Cooper 360, and State of the Union.
Along with ways to link news articles with Facebook, CNN.com provides options to share stories using other social networking and community or video sharing websites including Mixx, Twitter, Digg, delicious, reddit, MySpace, Stumble Upon, Linked In, and Viadeo. By providing users with options to link news articles with all of these websites, CNN is opening their website up to new media ideas and expanding their website to new users who ordinarily may not have visited the website on their own but if a friend recommended a certain article, they may choose to click it and visit.
I think the Facebook plug in is a great idea. It’s innovative and makes the news more personal because it brings a social aspect to each story and allows friends to share stories they find interesting.