Travel Channel viewers ‘flock to unlock’ on Twitter
Update: Well, of all the bad timing, Twitter crashed during the East Coast airing of the show. “All your excited tweeting about #NoReservations broke Twitter!” jokes @travelchannel, which released the bonus scene (below) regardless. “Thank you for tweeting w/ us during @NoReservations and being good sports during the outage,” they tweeted. Here’s the clip: Earlier: [...]
SocialGuide debuts daily social TV rankings
There’s a new form of ratings in town, and it has nothing to do with the Nielsens. SocialGuide ranks shows based on their popularity in the social media sphere by day, week or month. Along with Trendrr and Bluefin Labs — two other companies offering social TV data — it’s a new way of looking [...]
Social TV Summit to gather an emerging industry
It’s amazing to watch how quickly the social TV space has exploded over the last year. Next week, many companies at the forefront of the emerging industry will gather in Los Angeles for a one-day summit. And Lost Remote readers can attend at a discount. The Social TV Summit on July 20th will feature top [...]
Social TV startup lands investment from RealNetworks
The social TV startup ClipSync powers the community conversation around the CBS Big Brother experience on RealNetwork’s paid “SuperPass” service. And now, RealNetworks has decided to invest in the company to expand the integrated service to more TV shows. Like it’s been for years, Big Brother fans can log into SuperPass and watch behind-the-scenes streams [...]
Diane Sawyer to tweet for first time during show
ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer will be tweeting along with “Primetime: The Jaycee Dugard Interview” this weekend — the first time she’s tweeted from her new @dianesawyer account. Primetime will be using the hashtag #JayceeABC to encourage and focus the conversation this Sunday, 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET. “I want to hear what viewers [...]
The team that made ‘The Voice’ a social TV hit
There’s no doubt that NBC’s new hit The Voice has set a gold standard for how to create a live broadcast in the age of the social web. Coverage on the show’s ratings and social media success continues to pour in since the first season’s finale last week.
The genius behind the digital success (and the fact that The Voice has been one the most aggressive shows to integrate Twitter on the air) is that social media isn’t seen as a marketing vehicle but as core to the entire production. Here’s an in-depth interview with Andrew Adashek, the Digital Producer for Mark Burnett (and startup guy) who shared how his team of social broadcasters are creating new roles within the Hollywood production chain.
What were some of the biggest successes?
For sure, the Twitter engagement and to connect with the audience in real-time and making it accessible to the coaches and artists. Giving the artists access right away. A lot of shows would sequester, whereas we were actively encouraging it. One of the bigger successes, we were able to pull back the chains. To grow organically.
What were some of the guidelines you gave to the coaches?
We didn’t want people to give spoilers really far in advance, don’t tell anybody, don’t spoil things that would ruin it for everyone, may not ruin the competition but there’s a certain element of surprise that would be fun. Also, profanity. Artists could use their own twitter accounts. We couldn’t show favoritism towards any one artists. We had to remain neutral, we had to give a fair amount of coverage and just play neutral. We wanted everything to be open and personally.
What was the relationship like with Twitter?
Twitter was super helpful in sharing what was working with us and showing us, and pulling back the vail and saying what was helpful. They gave us the tools we needed to fine tune #thevoice (when to put it on-air) and putting it up at key moments in the show so people were in control. Also to make that single hashtag let peopel connect universally on twitter around the show. They helped us see when we would see spikes in activity, when activity would slow down. When we hit the Social Media Room, we’d see great deal of buzz. We were pulling in interesting commentary from the viewers at home, who had awesome opinions.
How do you get a tweet onto live broadcast?
On our side, we’d pull in filter for the tweets we were looking for. We had a rundown of what we thought would happen next, what performances, I’d think about that experience and customize everything about the show. Real-time watching the show and watching the television. Things change very quickly without us knowing, so we’d need to update the filters.
If there’s an episode where two artists kissed, we’d look to see what people are saying. You have to be real-time. Then we would take all the information go through standards and legal. We built all the pieces so it would connect from that system to the expression which would actually show it on air. We would have it down to 15seconds from real-time to get it through everyone on the air. That’s probably what took by far the most energy and development to get it real-time through all of those pieces….
What Facebook, Google video chat means for TV
As predicted by just about everyone, Facebook’s “awesome” new product is video calling, powered by Skype. Facebook rolled it out today — it’s a quick plugin download — and you simple click a “call” button next to a user’s profile and it rings them on the other end. If the user doesn’t answer, you can [...]
Bluefin Labs rolls out social TV ratings system
Traditional TV ratings measure how many people are watching, but a new ratings system developed by Bluefin Labs measures how viewers respond to television. Led by the head of the Cognitive Machines group at MIT Media Lab, Bluefin Labs says it mapped the “TV genome” to come up with a new set of metrics it [...]
Prime time for mobile devices same as TV
Here’s even more proof that mobile devices are television’s “second screen.” A new report by ad-serving company MediaMinds found that the peak time people use the mobile web and apps is 7-9 p.m. (graph below), overlapping with television’s prime time period. And not only do people use their mobile devices more, they click ads more: [...]
Fox News Twitter account hacked with fake stories
Update: Twitter sent us a statement. “While Twitter does monitor accounts for brute-force login attempts and similar methods of attack, we’re unable to anticipate compromises that take place due to offsite behavior,” Twitter said. “Generally speaking, we suggest using an email address associated with your domain or, if you do not have one, using two-factor [...]
Report: Google in early talks to buy Hulu
The LA Times is reporting that Google is in preliminary talks to buy the video service Hulu, and other big suitors are in play, too. “Hulu has begun meeting with potential buyers including Google, Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to drum up interest in a sale,” the LA Times reports. It all began when Yahoo [...]
