Embed Video in Facebook News Feed

Submitted by Chris Little on September 24, 2009
Edition
Express, Pro, Enterprise

We recently worked with Facebook to enable playback of Brightcove video in the 'News Feed.' Now Brightcove publishers can allow their users to share content into their News Feeds on Facebook*. 

You will probably want to create a new player for viral sharing on Facebook to turn off advertising and track the performance separately in your reports. Within the HTML code of your site you can configure how the metadata will be passed into the News Feed. Full details on Facebook sharing options can be found here.  Once this is set, a few lines of JavaScript create a button that enables users to post one of your videos to their Facebook news feed for all of their friends to see.

Brightcove Video in your Facebook News Feed

One of our first customers to take advantage of this is Rainbow Media's WE tv. I have also created a demo of this and attached the source code with instructions below.

Getting Started

  1. Download the file, extract it, and open it in a text editor.
  2. Edit the meta tags at top of the HTML page.
  3. Get the JavaScript publishing code for the Brightcove player you want to use from your account and replace the demo Brightcove player.
  4. Edit "image_src" and "video_src" within the Facebook button code to reference your image and the video player that you want to be posted in the News Feed. Retain the format of 'video_src' url and add your publisher ID, player ID, and video IDs.

*Note: Be sure to abide by Facebook’s Platform Guidelines, and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Please note that advertising is not allowed on user profile pages.