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How do virtual event platforms integrate with Facebook or Twitter apps?
Are there platforms that can integrate with Facebook and Twitter? What has your experience been using these apps? What can these apps do?
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6 Answers
Erica,
I can speak for Unisfairs Virtual Engagement platform, which is integrated with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Here are multiple areas where you can leverage this as an organizer:
1. On the microsite or landing page you have the ability for registrants to forwad the link to their communities using the integrated social media icons as well as email. You can also use twitter and FB icons to increase your followership from here.
2. Once inside an event you will find social media icons on the bottom of every page, allowing your audience to update their communities anytime. Tweets/posts can be pre-set with specific messages, making it easier to tweet about your specific event. The event Hashtag will automatically be included on every tweet.
3. Booths and meeting rooms provide the option for attendees to follow you, or to tweet and post messages out to theri communities.
4. Twitter rolls allow you to integrate social media streams with webcasts during sessions, live and on-demand.
5. Dedicated Social media reports summarize social media activity by attendee and let you drill down to the content of the individual messages. With the customizable Unisfair engagement index http://www.unisfair.com/virtual-engagement you can automatically rank attendees by social media activities you want to promode during an event.
Using all of the techniques described, we were able to increase the audience of a recent event from 1,100 to 1,200 during the live event. Just by monitoring the Unisfair twitter stream, you can see that our customers are rapidly adopting social media intergation as a natural extension of their virtual events.
Best
Joerg
Hi Erica, Many (I believe all) of the platforms have some form of integration with social networking platforms, most commonly LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
With that said, I believe there are improvements that can be made in the experience. The following comments are based on my experience going into various platforms and are not indicative of any one platform's pros/cons:
1) Registration: To date, most of the platforms require a separate registration form and then ask for your Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter information after you've registered. Oftentimes, this is a multi-step process. As more and more individuals interconnect their social media presence, I think platforms also need to move beyond the reg form.
Since individauls include more info on their social network sites, platforms should consider using existing profiles (espeically Linkedin and Facebook) to do a single sign-on process. Then information about that person and her social graph are pulled into the platform itself.
2) Friends & Family: Regardless of how I register into the event, assume that I do provide my LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter login. At this time, I only know of one platform, maybe two who have a workable matchmaking widget within the platform.
What I mean by matchmaking is, after you provide permission, going out to your social graph, pulling those individuals into the event and letting you know who's also registered or logged into the event. Taking this a step further, based on your profile, and eventually the types of individuals you connect with online, the platform should then provide you with matches of prospective individuals with whom you should connect. This increases your networking opportunities accordingly.
3) Consistent Social Presence: From my perspective, the social media integration seems to be inconsistent throughout the event. For example, the Twitter stream may be available in the lounge area but doesn't appear in the exhibit hall or when you're viewing a presentation.
I realize that many will say that this is the organizer's preference and not something that the vendors can control.
But, I've seen more and more chatter by audience members about why the social conversations aren't consistent throughout the virtual environment. From an participant perspective, I want the conversations consistently available so I don't have to hunt for it or pay attention to Tweetdeck to follow. The goal is to keep me attentive to the environment. Social conversations is one aspect of that.
4) Lounge Chat and Twitter Chat - What's the difference?: To date, most of the platforms have two different areas for a general chat within the event, usually the Lounge, and for Twitter conversations - separate widget. There must be a way to integrate the two so two separate conversations aren't happening around the same show. For those without a Twitter ID, they should be able to particpate in the conversation and indicate if they want the comments shared externally. For those with Twitter IDs, they can select to connect with Twitter and particpate that way.
Let me know if you have more specific questions about social integration within the platforms.
There are a few approaches that virtual event platforms (or any app or web site, for that matter) can take with regard to social media integration:
1) Barebones, "non integrated".
Users click on hyperlinks and are then taken outside of the virtual event platform to a URL hosted by the social network. For instance, to post an update to Twitter, the platform could place a hyperlink to http://twitter.com/home?status=example. This isn't true "integration", but does introduce social elements into the environment.
2) Social media widgets, "somewhat integrated".
Widgets are lightweight pieces of code that can be inserted into a virtual event platform to invoke social features - the code references operations hosted by the social network service. For example:
Twitter widgets: http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets
Facebook Like button: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/
LinkedIn widgets: http://developer.linkedin.com/community/widgets
3) Full integration via Application Programming Interfaces (API).
This level of integration is the deepest and involves the virtual event platform making calls to the social network's API. The benefits are twofold: it creates a more seamless user experience for attendees (as they remain within the virtual environnment) and, it allows the platform to capture and track per-attendee activity with social networks.
Twitter API: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/w/page/22554648/FrontPage
LinkedIn API: http://developer.linkedin.com/community/apis
Facebook's Developers site: http://developers.facebook.com/
We use http://xeesm.com as a bridge between the virtual event platform - in our case On24 - and the social web.
An event registrant can either register from scratch or simply use the "Register with Facebook" button see here:
http://socialtecworld.com/index.php/registration/
Hi Erica, I'm sure lots of platforms do different things but I thought you might be interested in what we do at moreconference.com. The focus for us is creating an online space in which delegates can interact with each other, but sometimes delegates want to use Twitter to keep their followers (who are usualyl non-delegates) informed about the event they are attending. We've set up our service so that delegates can post to the moreconference discussion board from Twitter just by using a special hashtag (as long as they've added their Twitter username to their moreconference account). Would be interested to hear how other services approach this issue too. Thanks, Francis (Director http://www.moreconference.com)
Great question Erica. I use FaceBook & Linkedin a lot to promote events, but it can be a pain if it is a paid event where they have to click a link to be taken to an RSVP page away from either FaceBook or Linkedin. This invariably results in two head counts: The number confirmed through ticket sales, and the number confirmed through clicking "Yes, I'm attending" on FaceBook or Linkedin (this number is usually much higher than the paid RSVPs).
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