NBC offers trivia game to Facebook users

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, delivers a keynote address at the company's annual conference in San Francisco, California July 23, 2008.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC News has made a big pitch to the Facebook generation, offering users of the social-networking site the chance to test their knowledge using video from the network's vast archives.

The "What's Your ICue?" application pits Facebook members either one on one or in teams, answering trivia questions on current events, history, arts and technology. The NBC News archives are already being used to populate its educational site iCue.com.

NBC News CFO Adam Jones said Thursday that the original iCue is based on social networking, educating and gaming so it was natural to find a way to extend the brand on other platforms. The team hit upon a Facebook application after seeing how the social networking site has grown.

"There's no video trivia application on Facebook as it exists so we felt there was an opportunity to jump in," Jones said.

The idea came up earlier in the year but was developed in about 12 weeks beginning in August.

"All of the work was done in house at a very modest cost," Jones said.

Beyond the five categories of questions, Jones said there's plenty more where they came from. NBC News' iCue has about 12,000 videos to draw upon, and more topics and themes are in the works.

NBC News' iCue has about 12,000 videos to draw upon, and more topics and themes are in the works.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter