How my local TV station is taking its next step in social TV

This Thursday night, I’m going to be one of the lucky participants in the next phase of social TV at the Seattle TV station I work at, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News. Even better is that we’re encouraging all of you to join in and help us out, as well. Starting Thursday at 10 p.m. online, and at 10:30 p.m. on TV and online, we’ll be airing Connect with Jenni Hogan, a TV special about how people can get the most use out of social media, and we’ll be making the audience at home a huge part of our show.

SocialGuide debuts new TV analytics and engagement tool

It’s a shoot-out in the social TV analytics space these days, with SocialGuide, Trendrr, Bluefin Labs and Networked Insights among those companies battling it out across networks, brands and agencies. SocialGuide has launched a new product called SocialGuide Intelligence (SGI), which it bills as the only social TV analytics and audience engagement platform in the marketplace. Beyond offering social TV reports and ratings for different TV shows and channels, it enables clients to “identify and engage with its social influencers and key comments” from directly within the tool.

‘Pretty Little Liars’ blows up in social media, as the kids say

ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars” has always attracted lots of social media attention, thanks in part to its young female audience. Monday’s season finale of the show, however, generating nearly 645K tweets, peaking at 32K tweets per minute. “We’ve been tracking tweets about television shows and events for several years, and this is one of the biggest hours of TV on Twitter we’ve ever seen,” said Jenn Deering Davis, Founder of TweetReach. “‘Pretty Little Liars’ is consistently among the most active shows we track, and last night’s finale eclipsed the show’s previous high of 289K tweets during one show.”

Social startup Never.no teams with TV graphics firm Vizrt

This is an interesting partnership to note. In advance of NAB next month, the social TV startup Never.no has partnered with one of the biggest TV graphics companies, Vizrt. Calling it an “unprecedented integrated social TV and graphics infrastructure,” the companies promise to help solve one of the biggest challenges of social TV: seamlessly incorporating audience participation in a way that matches the visual flow of the broadcast, both on TV and devices.

ConnecTV debuts ‘timeout detector’ for March Madness

The second-screen app ConnecTV — which has partnered with 201 TV stations across 10 local media groups — launched some interesting co-viewing features in time for March Madness. For starters, the app can recognize the game you’re watching (via audio) and display real-time stats and background info on the respective teams and players.

Briefs: Tweek, Nielsen, Facebook TV, Pew report

A few quick links around the web related to social TV:

- Tweek launches its social TV discovery iPad app in the UK and Germany (TNW)
- Nielsen, Group M work on new cross-platform TV ratings tool (PaidContent)
- Facebook is in an ideal position to take advantage of social TV, finds report (IPTV)
- Broadcast news breaks audience decline trends, finds Pew study (TV Technology)

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ABC Shark Tank’s Daymond John and Kevin O’Leary on social TV

Every entrepreneur should be watching an amazing reality show now in its third season. ABC’s Shark Tank, produced by Mark Burnett Productions is like watching NBC’s The Voice (also produced by Burnett) but instead of a singing competition it’s a startup competition with real-time negotiations over equity and investments. The startup community is finally embracing this show in full force (see James Altucher’s guest post on TechCrunch about the show)…

Social TV highlights and takeaways from SXSW

Both Natan and I enjoyed a few days in Austin for SXSW Interactive this week, navigating even longer lines than last year, dodging the occasional rainstorm and searching for 3G service that actually worked. As we previewed, there were over a dozen social TV events and sessions, and we saw many more TV folks compared to last year. Here are some SXSW highlights, and we asked several social TV execs who attended for their biggest takeway from the annual event:

Mark Burnett takes ownership stake in YouToo

Last year YouToo launched a “social TV network” in collaboration with Mark Burnett’s production’s company, VIMBY, which produced content for the new site. Today, Burnett announced that One Three Television, another company of his, has invested in YouToo. “I’m excited to find opportunities to deepen our audiences’ connection with our shows through Youtoo’s amazing technology,” he said. YouToo allows anyone to upload a video and potentially appear on TV as quickly as minutes later. To date, YouToo says its technology has broadcast over 50,000 people…

Zeebox hires top TV exec to prep for US launch

The UK social TV company Zeebox announced today it hired Jason Forbes from Time Warner Cable Media where he was senior VP of strategy, products and marketing. Forbes will be tasked with heading up Zeebox’s US operations as the company prepares to launch its social TV app in the states. “We’re delighted to have Jason join the Zeebox team,” said Ernesto Schmitt, CEO of Zeebox. “He brings significant domain expertise and a broad set of relationships in the US broadcasting and media industries…”

SXSW: Twitter stats from Austin’s annual event [infographic]

We kept an eye on Mass Relevance‘s new SXSW Social Viewer in Austin, and now the company has crunched the numbers of the bazillions of tweets sent during SXSW. They’ve compiled an entertaining infographic with everything from the most RT’d tweets and photos to the most-mentioned brands. By the way, a study by Simply Measured of the SXSW tweets found there was a 60% increase in tweet volume this year and 77% were sent from an iOS device.

SXSW: HBO ‘Girls’ creator Lena Dunham on how Twitter has affected her creative process

The talk of the town at this year’s SXSW Interactive was that the “social media bubble” was here. I even sat on a panel on just that topic. There were endless registration lines, long waits to packed panel sessions and millions of trees worth of one-sheets on new social media platforms flying through the air. SXSW Film was also underway, where tons of TV writers, creators, directors, producers and actors had all come to talk about their new projects. While I’m not sure if these TV folks have heard of GetGlue or Miso yet, many of them have built a powerful presence on Twitter.

Exclusive discount to Social TV Summit in San Francisco

The West Coast version of the Social TV Summit is coming up quickly, Tuesday, April 3 in San Francisco — and there are only a few tickets remaining. Just like last time, Lost Remote readers can get a $300 discount. Speakers include execs from IntoNow, Google, MySpace TV, Viggle, Shazam, ConnecTV, Miso, ClipSync, TVPlus, Trendrr, SocialGuide, Bluefin Labs, Networked Insights, Nielsen, Echo, TV Guide, FOX and many more….

SXSW: Trendrr rolls out new social TV features with 2.0 launch

With the competition heating up in the social TV analytics space, Trendrr has rolled out a brand new platform — a “full rebuild” — with a bevy of new features. Some of the new additions include competitive benchmarks, audience influence scores for advertising, character and talent charts (for example, animated characters over-index on Facebook), 24/7 tracking, audience programming affinities and Spanish language support.

SXSW: Peel launches new features to make ‘Idol’ more social

At CES we wrote about Peel launching more social features within their app that can also control your TV via universal remote functionality. Their technology is embedded into the Samsung Galaxy, and now they’ve launched a brand new engagement platform at SXSW that will coincide with the finalist episodes of American Idol. Peel demoed the new tools for Lost Remote last week when they explained that the real-time sentiment tools will facilitate “cheering and booing with the audience, rating the performances, judging the judges, and predicting the results – including which unlucky contestant will be voted off the show that week.”

NCAA.com gears up for most social March Madness yet

College basketball and March Madness have always been a platform for massive fan participation. With so many high-profile games that always end up being so captivating, a more mature social TV ecosystem is going to provide fans even more ways to chat about the games and connect with their favorite teams. Turner Sports recently announced a list of new digital tools that they’re launching for this year. Excitingly, live video streaming coverage of all 67 games of the men’s basketball tournament will be available online at NCAA.com and via iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Android devices, according to their release.

Mass Relevance launches real-time SXSW Social Viewer

As we fly to Austin for SXSW, Mass Relevance has rolled out a new product called Companion, a flexible second-screen viewer that brands can adapt to live events with their own sponsors. And to demonstrate it, Mass Relevance has launched the SXSW Social Viewer, bringing together real-time conversations about the annual event across devices. The viewer is built in responsive HTML 5, which means it looks just as snazzy in an iPhone or iPad browser as your laptop…

Inside look at Time Warner Cable Media’s approach to social TV

Time Warner Cable, the fourth largest MSO has a national footprint that helps define the TV ecosystem. There’s often a hunger and feeling of hopeful inevitability that social TV startups will plunge into the billion dollar business that has helped create what we know as TV today for the past fifty plus years. The truth is that TV ad prices are continuing to rise and what was once just a thirty second spot is now a launching pad for a massive social TV campaign.

Actv8.me launches the ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ second screen app

Back in December, Mark Burnett announced a deal with ACTV8.me to create customized second-screen experiences for several of his upcoming TV shows. Now the first app has launched for iPhone and iPad, The Celebrity Apprentice, in time for this Sunday’s episode. An Android version will be coming soon. We haven’t had a chance to give it a spin yet — it’s designed for a synchronized experience — but the press release does a good job explaining the feature set:

Foursquare, VH1′s Save The Music launch badge to raise funds

VH1′s Save The Music Foundation has been a staple in the network’s efforts to give back to the music community it helps define through its network. The foundation “is a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring instrumental music education in America’s public schools, and raising awareness about the importance of music as part of each child’s complete education.” In their most recent efforts to leverage social to raise funds for the foundation they’ve teamed up with Foursquare to launch a new badge.