The Company
CBS's "The Insider," a nightly half-hour entertainment newsmagazine, entered its fifth season on September 8, 2008. Each night viewers tune in for its TV broadcast, and later 5M online users engage with its content on theinsider.com. The site highlights thousands of video clips and celebrity photo galleries in addition to addictive interactive games, trivia and polls — all in a social setting. By implementing Facebook Connect, Facebook users can easily create profiles on theinsider.com, and share information back with their friends on Facebook.
Their Facebook Connect Implementation
CBS's implementation allows Facebook users to easily create profiles on theinsider.com and post comments using their real identity (i.e., profile photo and real name). Users interact with their friends and share their comments with their Insider friends, as well as back with their friends on Facebook.com. And, users have ultimate control over what they want to share, where, and with whom.
Our users love to consume our content and engage and share their opinions. We love the idea of enabling them to do this on theinsider.com, but also with Facebook's over 150M users, many close to our core demographic. It enables users to have more meaningful engagement with our content, and is great exposure for our brand.
–Debbie Gathard, Product Manager, theinsider.com
Implementing Connect
Facebook Connect was streamlined and easy. We received great feedback internally, and — another big win — the QA time and effort was shorter than projects we'd had with other third parties in the past.
–Debbie Gathard, Product Manager, theinsider.com
How it benefits CBS
Since implementing Facebook Connect, the Insider has seen a significant increase in traffic on theinsider.com, and over 85% of new registered users are using Facebook Connect! Users enjoy sharing their opinions about celebrities and entertainment with their friends, and now they can share content and their findings with all of their even more easily friends.
Would they recommend it?
Absolutely. It's already a buzz around the office.
–Debbie Gathard, Product Manager, theinsider.com