ABCNews.com murdered Facebook Connect
December 2, 2009
Did you watch President Obama's press
conference on abc.com last night with the intention of
participating in the Facebook chat? Did you find it an
impossible task? Did you find yourself asking whose stupid idea
this was? I did. But then I wasn't surprised. As one who used to
work for ABC News I do know them to be an unenlightened bunch.
And just think, I could have enlightened them to one basic fact.
THE COMMENTS SCREEN SHOULD BE ADJACENT TO THE FEED. Hello!
Did anyone not see that you cannot make comments on something
you cannot see. Oh sure, you could hear it but the purpose of
watching a feed is to see it. Otherwise you could have turned on
the radio. While that was the largest issue I saw there were, of
course, others. Like didn't they think that people might sign in
early enough to be prepared and want some entertainment while
they waited? They spent money to send commentators to the event.
Why not put them up? Could the cost for a few extra minutes of a
feed be that much that you risk people turning away, which would
defeat the purpose of the whole venture. Hmmm. Don't think so.
And another thing......obviously someone paid for commercial
advertising time prior to the feed, but if I'm running late and
want to watch, must I still be subjected to that commercial?
Well, not really because in the time that the commercial ran,
which was a long approximately 2 minutes (or felt like it), I
pulled up the CNN feed.
Enough of the technical issues. Let's
talk marketing. Did anyone actually know this was occurring? I
guess only if you watch ABC news and even then if you were not
aware of Facebook Connect's capabilities, would you have
understood what was going to happen? I will tell you that when I
first went to the page to sign in, I noticed that others were
already there, which I thought was a good thing. The problem is,
and here we go again with the lack of forethought, is that
someone had the 'bright' idea to make the feed look as if there
was a significant amount of activity. In reality there were only
a few signed on whose posts were being replicated. Can you say
duped? Well, I wasn't because guess what.... I CAN READ!
Therefore it was easy for me to see that they were trying,
albeit unsuccessfully, to pull a flim-flam. Sorry folks, not
takers. So ABCNews.com messed up a
golden opportunity and wasted your time. How do you handle that
for the next event? You watch CNN.
And ABCNews you might want to think about who you lay off next
time. Obviously I know more than those left behind. Next
time just contact me first...
handlethat@ymail.com |
