This short guide will unveil the mystery behind the social widgets we have.
Social digital signage is one of the new faces of interactive digital signage, in which we connect to the social networks by bringing them to your big screen. When it comes to Instagram – the interactivity is cool: you can use your smartphone to update your social network and it will immediately be reflected on your signage screen. Isn’t that splendid?
Currently, there are 6 social widgets:
- YouTube
- Ustream
- Facebook – Temporarily inoperative
- Twitter/X – Discontinue the service
- Yammer – Discontinue the service
YouTube allows you to display YouTube videos and YouTube channels. Using it is very easy: you just need to copy to URL from the browser playing the YouTube video you wish to play on your widget. Please remember that the YouTube widget is streamed and not media files which are cached on your Android, Windows or ChromeOS device (as in most widgets we have). Hence, in case of internet failure, the YouTube widget will cease playing. Therefore, our recommendation is that in case you have a specific video you wish to play over and over, you better convert it to an MP4 video file (in case there is no copyright) and use it in the video widget instead.
Ustream is a live streamed channel (www.ustream.tv). It broadcasts live channels as well as recorded ones. In order to use the many channels of Ustream, one needs to be a subscriber of video.ibm.com. However, they have also a couple of free channels. Using the widget is very simple: in the “Id” property you just need to fill the ID of the Ustream video you’d like to set.
Facebook is a widget that lets you choose any public page album (not only yours, but any user’s) by its URL and play its pictures as a slideshow, one after the other. For more information of how to use the Facebook social widget, please click here. – Discontinue the service
Twitter allows you to play live feeds by multiple queries. It allows you text and pictures in several variations. You need to have an account in order to log in and then you can use it. For more information of how to use the Twitter social widget, please click here. – Discontinue the service
Instagram allows you to show Instagram photos and feeds in a couple of layouts. You can follow the user which you have logged in as, or a hashtag within your user. For more information of how to use the Instagram social widget, please click here.
Yammer allows you to play live feeds either in scrolling layout and in free customizable layout. It allows you text and pictures in several variations. You need to have an account in order to log in and then you can use it. Yammer is a social network used in organizations for internal communication. For more information of the Yammer widget, please click here. – Discontinue the service
Here is a video for demonstrating how to combine social widgets in your creative and broadcast them to your big screen:
To get back to the training page, please click here.