For the past month or so, we've been working on Facebook Connect integration with our site, and now it's finally available for you to try out. It's a great way for users to be able to mix the powerful web channel surfing experience on ffwd with the unique social context that Facebook provides.

This first release includes the following features:

- Sign up or log in to your account on ffwd using your Facebook account.

- Import your favorite shows and interests from Facebook directly into your ffwd channel.

- View or search for your Facebook friends on ffwd using their Facebook identities.

- Post videos directly to your Facebook profile page when sharing or saving a video on ffwd.

We'll continue to work on improving the Facebook user experience on our site in the coming months, so please let us know what else you'd like to see!

For you Twitter vanguards, we just launched three features that are a simple way to act on four of Guy Kawasakiʼs tips for be coming Mr. Goodtweet:

• Tip 5: “Always be linking”,
• Tip 6: “Establish yourself as a subject expert”,
• Tip 7: “Incorporate pictures and other media”,
• Tip 8: “Use the right tools”.

If you are logged into your ffwd account the titles below will link to where you can get the three components

Twitter Connect
Guyʼs Tips: Always be linking, Other media
Populate your Twitter stream with useful video information ffwd channels (a compilation of the best videos on a topic crowdsourced from all over the web) you are watching. ffwd share Bookmarklet
Guyʼs Tips: Use the right tools, Always be linking Standardize and simplify the sharing of videos from nearly anywhere on the web. Instead of finding and learning the sharing function for every site you find a video on,
just click on “ffwd share” for a consistent UI to share a video with your friends or save it as a favorite. Your
shares will be add to the ffwd index, a collective wisdom on the best videos out there and now with ffwdʼs Twitter Connect post to your Twitter feed.

Personal Video Lifestream
Guyʼs Tips: Establish yourself as a subject expert, Other media
Launch a virtual television channel that you control. Videos from all over the web that youʼve shared, saved, and tweeted, as well as any channels youʼve subscribed to are collected in one place which your followers can subscribe to. The UI of the page transforms a list of videos into a channel surfing joy: no scrolling and clicking necessary. Your followers just need to watch your discoveries and click the ffwd button to bring up the next video when theyʼd like to move on.

ffwd share Bookmarklet
Guy’s Tips: Use the right tools, Always be linking
Standardize and simplify the sharing of videos from nearly anywhere on the web. Instead of finding and learning the sharing function for every site you find a video on, just click on “ffwd share” for a consistent UI to share a video with your friends or save it as a favorite. Your shares will be add to the ffwd index, a collective wisdom on the best videos out there and now with ffwd’s Twitter Connect post to your Twitter feed.

It’s remarkable how a few simple pieces of technology when combined can create an enormous value proposition. If “you are what you eat” gave way to “you are what you watch”, then maybe now it’s giving way to “you are what you tweet”. We see this growing into Twitter Television: the ability to watch video tweets in real time like a television channel. We look forward to your feedback, but more importantly we look forward to see what you tweet to your channel, so we can discover it too.

DEMO attendee Paul Watson posted on his blog that one nice feature missing from our site was a bookmarklet to allow users to post videos directly from a web page to their ffwd accounts. So tonight we rolled out something along those lines, a "Share With FFWD" bookmarklet that pretty much does exactly that - send a video to friends, and it automatically gets added to your channel feed as well.

Get your thumb ready! We've been talking about this for a while, but I hope you can still share my excitement for getting it out the door. People's eyes light up when I tell them about the future we are aiming for, channels of Internet content streamed to your TV, but then they come back to earth saying, but that's not happening anytime soon. That's what we thought, too: 2010 probably, 2009 maybe. but then last fall I was approached by a consumer electronics manufacturer with a question.

Q: What do you think Internet TV should look like?

A: Why do you ask?

Q: Well we are putting this here Internet jack in our TVs next year and we're wondering what else we could do with it.

A: Next Year! Uh I mean, we've got some ideas. Interested?

Well now it is...next year...and I'm proud to reveal the first product to use the ffwd platform for delivering Internet TV to your, uh, TV. Everything you've saved to your ffwd account will be there waiting for you. You'll also be able to discover new favorites based on your profile and what others are watching. Existing beta users point your Wii browsers to http://www.ffwd.com and we'll automatically detect your Wii-ness. Others can see screen captures and more information at http://www.ffwd.com/wii

Happy channel surfing...ffwd can make it easier...but only your couch can make it this comfortahhhhhh...

We posted a new site build tonight (beta 1.10a) which adds a cool new "video personality" character to your user profile page:

What's your video personality based on?  Well, we compare your favorite TV shows to all other users, and then with some mathemagical science, we assign you a cartoon personality, all in good fun of course.  Keep on the lookout for an embeddable site widget for this very soon, so that you can share yours with your friends on other sites.

Today is a very exciting day for the ffwd team. We are officially launching our private beta program. This of course means new features and enhancements more below), but most importantly it means there are going to be a bunch of new faces on the site. Please be nice to them!

Based on our users' requests, the private beta of the site includes these features:

1. the ability to send videos to anyone with an email address (try it out on the Share a Video form)

2. new sites you can grab videos from. You can grab the URL of a video from any of these sites and add it to your favorites or send it to a friend:

• Blip.tv
• College Humor
• Daily Motion
• iFilm
• ManiaTV
• MetaCafe
• MySpace
• Revver
• YouTube

3. A new third party developer API (under the hood). This is a critical piece of our open networks strategy, and we will be introducing the full API to developers at a later date. Until then, you can contact us directly at developer@ffwd.com to request a beta developer account.

The site is "fully functional" as of this release, but still a work in rogress, so please keep that feedback coming especially on:

• other content sources you'd like us to add
• what you'd like to see in an OpenSocial and Facebook application
• using ffwd with your television

Also starting today, we'll be selecting active users to preview features "in the labs" and participate in the product planning process.

We've now released another update to the site.  The Beta 1.4 update improves some of the profile management features on the site, and includes additional cosmetic and bug fixes which we didn't have time to roll into the previous build.  A big thanks go out to our private beta testers, who have been sending us valuable feedback about the site and what they'd like to see happen with it.  Keep that feedback coming!

integrated start page

member profile

discover page

ffwd player

recommendation form

recommend video message

Come check out a preview demo at TechCrunch 40 today (Monday 17th).