Facebook Connect comes to Israeli election coverage

Updated

The Israeli legislative elections are happening now, and Hebrew-language portal site Nana10 has just introduced a way to help readers share their thoughts about it, using Facebook Connect’s status update feature.

To start using it, you just click on the Connect button within the site’s homepage. You’ll get a box asking you to approve the site’s access to Facebook features like news feed and your profile; if you click on the status bar tab at the top, you’ll also be asked to grant Nana10 additional access in order to post updates directly from it to your Facebook profile and news feed.

[Update: Nana10 has turned on a live comment feed so any Facebook user can comment on the latest news. See the new screenshot I’ve added. Note that the video player’s not displaying because it’s in some weird Windows format (in Hebrew) and I’m on a non-Hebrew Mac. It’s much more interesting than the other part of the service that I mentioned in the original article last night, because it creates an instant group conversation on the site for anyone who cares about the news.]

The effect will be a way to talk with everyone you know on Facebook about the election news, although it doesn’t appear to be in real-time, and it’s not sorted based on who else is accessing the site. Also, the text reads right-to-left like in Hebrew, except it’s in English for me because I don’t speak Hebrew.

The widget was, as far as I know, done without Facebook’s help. Connect has so far been effectively used in one live event that I know of — CNN’s live streaming video of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. That integration was done with Facebook’s help, had real-time updates of comments, and showed you only the people who were also leaving messages about CNN’s live-stream. It was great. It also appears as if Nana10 has a separate sign-in process still available for its other readers — it’s not clear why that isn’t integrated with Connect.

Nana10 has done a good job considering the tools available; if recent announcements are anything to judge by, expect Facebook to roll out more ways to message (perhaps real-time features and a sorting mechanism?) soon.