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first full-fledged tv facebook connect implementation in the uk
We’re excited to launch Come Dine With Me Homemade, a project on which we’ve been working away for the last few months with the marketing, food and cross-platform teams at Channel 4, and in collaboration with ITV Studios.
As far as we’re aware*, this is the first time that any U.K. broadcaster has used all features of Facebook Connect in support of a television show (user identities, social graph, and stream publishing). The site allows viewers to make their own Come Dine With Me episode, using their own photos, adding custom soundbites from the show’s fantastic narrator Dave Lamb, plus theme tunes and graphics.
Facebook and Come Dine With Me are natural partners—nearly 200,000 people are fans of the show on Facebook. A user of Come Dine With Me Homemade is a single click away from logging into the site and viewing friends' parties, and then sharing content—slideshows & comments—back to Facebook.
MetaBroadcast built the front and back ends of Come Dine With Me Homemade. Once things get into full swing, we expect to be handling very large numbers of simultaneous users, especially after a peak-time airing of the TV show. Each user receives a personalised social experience on the site, so we have made heavy use of Project Purple, our own broadcast-strength social integration system.
Project Purple previously backed Test Tube Telly, a prototype social TV guide commissioned by 4iP, and launched in summer 2009.
Many thanks to the extended C4 team who trusted us with this delicate and highly satisfying project, special recognition going out to Louise Brown (@louby), Julia Pal and Jane Honey, Andrew Pipes (@The_Pied_Pipes), Sarah Rogers and Stephen Hardingham. We couldn’t have gotten this far without the help of Denise White at ITV Studios, Lisa Campana, Jamie Knight (@JamieKnight), Igor Volk, and of course John Ayres (@ayrez) and Robert Chatley (@belgiano).
We’re all happy to see it live after several months of sustained work, and rather sad that we cannot possibly touch the amazing prizes of Come Dine With Me Homemade. But you probably can :)
*James Kirkham points out in the comment below that Holler launched a Facebook Connect website for Virgin 1’s Restaurant in Our Living Room months back. The more, the merrier.
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..hmmm…this ISN’T the first time someone has used facebook connect to support a TV show though… we did it months ago with Virgin One for ‘restaurant in our living room’ – http://restaurantinourlivingroom.virgin1.co.uk
James Kirkham
Good point, I’ve just had a play (and edited our post). It’d be great to learn more about it, especially why you guys opted for Facebook Connect--what was the main benefit, and how it all went/ goes.
Mirona Iliescu
Hi James,
We had a play with your site for Virgin One just now. We really liked the way you’ve used the Javascript-based FB connect libraries. It’s one of the smoothest client-side implementations I’ve seen.
After a fair chunk of experimentation, we opted for a server-side approach, because there’s a couple of things we couldn’t do with easily pure client-side code (like follow-up emails, caching data so folk can still log in when Facebook is unresponsive, and providing personalisation without requiring users to log in immediate).
If you’ve got a moment it would be fascinating to read a case study or blog post on how you approached this stuff, and especially what you found to be the pros/cons of Facebook on the client vs. server. We Googled pretty extensively before saying CDWM was an absolute first.
Or, maybe we can buy you a coffee and have a chat?
Chris
Chris Jackson
definitely.. drop me an email when you get time – where you based? be good to meet up and see what you’re up to and vice versa, might be some nice cross-over.
james Kirkham