Twitter Plus TV Creates “Social Viewing” - The Global Watercooler
Some fascinating insights from Twitter’s Robin Sloane about how people are engaging socially alongside live TV, nicely summarised in this article from GigaOM by Mathew Ingram…
Although television has become more fragmented thanks to the web, millions of people still tune in for certain shows, including the Emmys and the MTV Video Music Awards. The real-time conversation that Twitter allows makes it a perfect companion for those events, staffer Robin Sloan — who works on the social network’s media-partnership team — told attendees at GigaOM’s NewTeeVee Live conference this morning. Sloan said that the network gets 90-million-plus tweets every day, and “a lot of those tweets are about TV shows.”
As an example, he showed a graph of tweets about the show Dancing With the Stars. Huge peaks in traffic coincided exactly with new shows, meaning people were tweeting about the show as it was happening. The Twitter media evangelist talked about three things that using Twitter can do to make such events more powerful, including:
Synchronous show tweeting: in which channels such as Discovery get a scientist or some other knowledgeable person to tweet along with a show about a specific topic, to add information. This is “simple, but can be very powerful,” Sloan said.
Social viewing: Taking advantage of the fact that viewers are tweeting about the show is “the new campfire,” said Sloan — a way of showing people that they are not alone.True Blood has a whole website that just aggregates tweets about the show, so that viewers don’t have to remember hashtags, etc.
New kinds of content: During the MTV Video Music Awards show, Sloan said the network tracked all the tweets in real time and had a “Twitter jockey” on screen who watched them and picked out examples. The show also had a 95-foot-wide monitor showing the number of tweets and votes for specific stars.
This kind of “conversational choreography” is becoming a crucial part of any major TV event, Sloan said — just as important as focusing the stage lights or charging up the microphones — and can become a new way of reimagining content thanks to the “incredibly powerful force” that is the real-time conversation about that content.
Twitter Plus TV Creates “Social Viewing” - The Global Watercooler
Some fascinating insights from Twitter’s Robin Sloane about how people are engaging socially alongside live TV, nicely summarised in this article from GigaOM by Mathew Ingram…
Although television has become more fragmented thanks to the web, millions of people still tune in for certain shows, including the Emmys and the MTV Video Music Awards. The real-time conversation that Twitter allows makes it a perfect companion for those events, staffer Robin Sloan — who works on the social network’s media-partnership team — told attendees at GigaOM’s NewTeeVee Live conference this morning. Sloan said that the network gets 90-million-plus tweets every day, and “a lot of those tweets are about TV shows.”
As an example, he showed a graph of tweets about the show Dancing With the Stars. Huge peaks in traffic coincided exactly with new shows, meaning people were tweeting about the show as it was happening. The Twitter media evangelist talked about three things that using Twitter can do to make such events more powerful, including:
Synchronous show tweeting: in which channels such as Discovery get a scientist or some other knowledgeable person to tweet along with a show about a specific topic, to add information. This is “simple, but can be very powerful,” Sloan said.
Social viewing: Taking advantage of the fact that viewers are tweeting about the show is “the new campfire,” said Sloan — a way of showing people that they are not alone.True Blood has a whole website that just aggregates tweets about the show, so that viewers don’t have to remember hashtags, etc.
New kinds of content: During the MTV Video Music Awards show, Sloan said the network tracked all the tweets in real time and had a “Twitter jockey” on screen who watched them and picked out examples. The show also had a 95-foot-wide monitor showing the number of tweets and votes for specific stars.
This kind of “conversational choreography” is becoming a crucial part of any major TV event, Sloan said — just as important as focusing the stage lights or charging up the microphones — and can become a new way of reimagining content thanks to the “incredibly powerful force” that is the real-time conversation about that content.
If you don’t have time to read his excellent book ‘Where good ideas come from’, then spend four minutes with the author, Steven Johnson, here. It’s four minutes well invested.
I have a love-hate relationship with PayPal. I love the fact that the service makes it possible to send money to anybody who has an email address. But, having been paid my wages via PayPal in a previous job, I hate the charges that are sometimes inflicted on the receiver or sender (I could never work out which and why – something to do with being forced to upgrade to a Pro account, apparently).
So it’s with mixed emotions that I bring news that one million Brits have used PayPal to make a payment or send money on their mobile phone as the proliferation of smartphones is accelerating the take-up of mobile payments.
Although in PayPal’s case, what we’re actually talking about is traditional online payments or sending money to an individual online, taking place via mobile. Not paying for stuff in brick ‘n’ mortar stores using a mobile phone as a digital wallet of sorts. Either way, the use of PayPal on a mobile phone certainly seems to have reached a tipping point.
The company expects to close 2010 with 30 times the mobile payments volume globally of 2008, reaching over $700m. While in Britain specifically, PayPal saw “month on month mobile transactions grow by 20 per cent in July and August this year”, with UK customers making an average of almost five mobile transactions per-month. All of which has Petra Jung, head of mobile for PayPal in the UK, pretty excited:
“People have talked about ‘mobile money’ for some time, but our figures show real traction in the amount of money PayPal’s UK customers are sending from their mobile phones… By the end of the decade, millions of us won’t carry a wallet or purse – our phones will be enough.”
Interested in what the future holds for TV? Then you need to read this great article from Mark Suster. Amongst many coherent observations on the sector his reference of Zynga as a model to build value over time is spot on, namely ‘go where the consumers are, capture those audiences, build a direct relationship and then diversify channel partners…’
An exciting idea, a passionate entrepreneur and an example of a firm dedicating significent resources to innovation within a specific cause. GE, like many large organizations, has the tools and resources to enact incredible change and its often the focus on a specific issue which can make these ideas reality.
Strategist Bud Caddell wrote about this in a post recently and we share his point of view. Should big companies focus more on specific problems? With Ecomagination GE has been taking steps in the right direction, but its whether they have the commitment to take an idea like this beyond the lab, and into the real world, which will determine the answer to that question.
The first edition of GE’s Ecoimagination Challenge has a winner. After 3.800-plus applications, and 74.000 votes, Solar Roadways has been announced as winner of the $50.000 award.
Solar Roadways, has the audacious plan to replace America’s asphalt roads with textured, glass solar panels that could collect energy, distribute it and simultaneously serve up LED-powered signs. According to Solar Roadways’ founder Scott Brusaw, the idea is to install a massive solar panel network laid out end-to-end from California to New York that would dramatically change the energy landscape and the country’s literal landscape.
GE’s Ecoimagination Challenge aims to come with innovative solutions for the related to sustainable energy systems, divided in three categories: Create - renewable energy, Connect - grid efficiency, Use - buildings.
Great article focusing in on the amazing changes in how people are ‘watching’ TV. What was passive is now, most definitely, becoming active…It’s gone from “must-see TV” to “must-tweet TV,” but it’s still just about shared experiences, and I think that’s really a basic human behavior.
We’re proud to support the WIE Symposium event on Monday, September 20th. It was a pleasure to be joined by a couple of the organizers, Dee Poku and June Sarpong, at our 2nd Venturing Unlimited dinner last week, and from their description of the event its not to be missed.
The entire organizing team has put together an incredible list of speakers and it will be held at Skylight West.
Smart integration with Zagat. Its “API or Die” with companies in the space and an integration that leverages the great content and legacy of Zagat with the new technology of Foursquare, is a good bd move.
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