While Twitter seems to generate more buzz from media professionals these days, don’t forget Facebook, still the king of connection, when planning your social media strategy. More than 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each week, according to the company, and much of that consists of news articles and current events shared among friends.
Facebook’s Malorie Lucich wrote about creating a personalized news channel on the company blog yesterday, and offered some specifics via email on how The Huffington Post and other news sites have integrated Facebook Connect to make it easy for users to collaborate with their Facebook ID. Since HuffPo launched its huffingtonpost.com/social with Facebook Connect last August, Facebook referral traffic has gone up 77 percent, and 16 percent of comments now come from Facebook users.
Lucich also highlighted other examples of integration, including ABCNews.com which allowed users to watch the State of the Union Address and comment alongside the video, while sharing comments back to Facebook.
I like news sites using Facebook Connect for user IDs on article commenting because it solves a different problem: authenticity. You are who you are on Facebook, after all. So there’s no more hiding behind an anonymous screen name to start a flame war.