RCS teams with Facebook for news data visualisation

When local or national news reports that the latest controversy is ‘blowing up on Facebook,’ you most likely understand what they mean, but what if you could actually see it broken down by mentions, demographics and other stats?

Reality Check Systems has announced that its Public Content Solutions team has been working with Facebook to make these kinds of visualisations a reality for newsrooms and media outlets, with ‘Facebook Now.’ The application culls Facebook data, allows a controller to select the desired data to display, synthesises the information and transforms it into a realtime visualisation on-screen. By combining Vizrt technology with custom RCS control software, the app makes the data accessible via Facebook’s API for realtime display in an animated layout.

‘Facebook Now’ debuted last week as Facebook Media Solutions unveiled its new offering for broadcasters in this announcement, which names RCS as one of its partners. The technology can be previewed on multi-display installations RCS created for the company’s New York and Menlo Park offices, and is part of the social network’s larger effort to provide broadcasters with new tools that enhance the social viewing experience.

RCS has worked closely with Facebook’s Media Solutions team to ensure a range of modifiable templates for the system, which make it possible to illustrate everything from leading topic trends to top posts, popular Instagram photos and more. And, they will continue to collaborate as they evolve the application, adding new visualisations and templates.

As RCS expands Facebook Now’s capabilities, it will also be introducing new functionality to Ignite, which powers the displays. RCS Ignite fuses realtime data, social media and news with 3D graphics to share 24/7 coverage of breaking developments. Though ‘Facebook Now’ marks RCS’ first application of the technology, it has the potential be applied in a variety of settings.