Joost now beaconing what you watch to Facebook
Tonight I stumbled on an interesting feature that was quietly added to the Joost web site over the last few days.
The new feature makes use of Facebook “Beacon”. This is how Facebook describe this feature:
Facebook Beacon is a way for you to bring actions you take online into Facebook. Beacon works by allowing affiliate websites to send stories about actions you take to Facebook.
For this to work you must 1st be logged into you Facebook account. You then go to http://joost.com and start the playback of a video by clicking on a Joost video link in the web site.
When you click on the link a little Facebook beacon box will scroll up at the bottom right corner of your browser:
The beacon widget gives you the choice of allowing or refusing to send the information to your Facebook profile.
If you allow Joost to send the info to Facebook you will see in your account a new entry about the video you where watching:
You now have the option of allowing the “beaconned” information to appear in your profile. You do this by clicking the “Okay” button. Note that by default the “Always publish stories sent to my profile from this site.” option is selected. If you would rather authorize stories one at a time you may want to untick the option.
This is an intriguing integration between Joost and Facebook. It will certainly help promote the platform at virtually no cost to a lot of potential users. The bigger your list of Facebook friends the bigger the publicity impact will be. But it leaves somewhat a strange after taste in my mouth. Is the fact that I have a Facebook mean that I will constantly have to watch my back even more now? As more sites start to use the Facebook Beacon interface users will be bombarded with request like these when they expect them the least.
This must be the price to pay for the free digital age.
I have made a 720p video capture of the Joost + Facebook integration in action. The standard resolution embedded video can be found below:
Joost and Facebook beacon integration from Bernard Maltais on Vimeo.
Notice how I was surprised to find that my secong video playback was not showing in Facebook for authorization? This is what happen when you leave the “Always publish stories sent to my profile from this site.” option selected.