Using Facebook advertising to drive tune-in, meet Adotomi
Facebook is quickly becoming a backbone of social TV. With new timeline integrations from Netflix, Hulu, Boxee and more announced this week, the social powerhouse could very much start to look like a second-screen app for television discovery. Even Slingbox is now on Facebook and while it’s not a customized app, slingers can watch all their linear programming on Mark Zuckerberg’s college hack.
Sunday’s NBC debate to feature real-time Facebook comments
This Sunday morning, Republican candidates will gather in New Hampshire for a live debate co-sponsored by NBC’s Meet the Press and Facebook. In advance of the debate, Facebook conducted a poll of a selected sample of residents in New Hampshire and Iowa — via a simple poll in the right column of Facebook.com — asking them to select the issue most important to them. And NBC has been collecting debate questions via Facebook, as well.
Inside look at how VH1′s ‘Tough Love’ leveraged Facebook
At the Social TV Summit last month, Facebook’s Andy Mitchell told the audience that he’s “pretty confident” the massive social network can help drive ratings. Since Facebook has more than 800 million active users, most networks have adopted a strategy of creating show-specific pages to create and nurture the communities around their shows. This is also the case for VH1′s ‘Tough Love,’ a reality show about matchmaking and dating advice, hosted by matchmaker and celeb-host Steven Ward.
Netflix sharing on Facebook may be coming soon
When Facebook rolled out its “frictionless sharing” functionality at F8, Netflix CEO and Facebook board member Reid Hastings took the stage to praise the new features. “Watching content because my friend is [watching] trumps the algorithm,” he said. But as the first partners launched — Hulu included — Netflix was not among them in the U.S.
Why news sites should add Facebook’s new ‘Subscribe’ button
Facebook exec Joanna Shields just revealed at a conference that the social network is poised to roll out a “Subscribe” button that will allow users to subscribe to other users’ updates. Think of it as a Twitter “follow” button for Facebook, embeddable on any site.
“We will soon launch the Subscribe plugin, an extension of the Subscribe button, that publishers and other developers can add to their websites to make it easy for people to connect to reporters and public figures in one click,” Facebook said in a statement to The Next Web.
How Comcast’s Xfinity has earned nearly 1 million Facebook fans
It’s always interesting to learn how the MSOs are treating and using social. When we spoke with Synacor, a company that helps MSOs use a secure, single sign-on to authenticate their subscribers for second screen apps, we learned about the challenges that are faced in sharing links across the social web that are walled-in by a provider login. We spoke with Cox Communications, the fifth largest MSO and learned about Cox TV Online and improvements to the set top box. Also, recently heard Rachelle Zoffer, Director, Content Strategy & Acquisition, Interactive TV at Verizon Fios (my own MSO and the 7th largest one) speak at a Producer’s Guild of America New Media Council event where she discussed their investment in interactive widgets, such as on screen games for kids during Nick’s Spongebob.
Sony Bravia TV sets add Twitter ticker, Facebook app
Like an increasing number of connected TV sets, Sony’s Bravia sets are adding built-in Facebook and Twitter integration, along with the addition of YouTube HD.
The Twitter ticker scrolls tweets from your account along the bottom of the screen…
4 qualities of Facebook’s most-shared stories
Yahoo and CNN dominated the list of Facebook’s 40 most-shared articles of the year, which the social network released today. Yahoo accounted for 13, CNN had 10, NYTimes and Huffington Post had 7, Washington Post with 3 and WSJ had 1 on the list.
Watch live TV on Facebook via the new Slingbox app
Less than two weeks after our open letter to Slingbox, followed by their announcement, Slingbox for Facebook has arrived. SlingPlayer allows you to view your streamed cable box content anywhere, and that now includes a new Facebook app. You can change channels and control your DVR via a graphical remote inside the app:
Facebook: ‘Pretty confident’ we can help drive TV ratings
Facebook’s Andy Mitchell told the audience at the Social TV Summit on Wednesday that he’s “pretty confident” that his company’s integration with USA Network helped drive incremental ratings for the show Psych. He provided some impressive numbers from Facebook’s partnership with Nielsen to help back it up.
Inside look at A&E’s new social game for ‘Storage Wars’
Social games, specifically on Facebook, continue to help TV networks engage with fans and tap into a network of often private conversations. A&E’s number one show, Storage Wars released a social game today on Facebook in honor of the premiere of its new season. The show “follows teams of bidders looking to score it big in the high stakes world of storage auctions” when someone defaults on their payments. The series averaged 2.8 million viewers per episode and peaked at 3.8 million last season.
TV station giving away a car in Facebook contest
We’ve written lots of stories on Lost Remote about TV stations throwing Facebook contests to drive new likes — giving away iPads, concert tickets and donations to charities — but WFSB-TV in Hartford, Conn. is holding a contest with the biggest prize we’ve seen to date: a brand new 2011 Nissan Maxima. The contest, timed with sweeps, has four days remaining, and the station has already shot up to 76K fans, up from 58K fans a month ago.
Watch Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at the Social TV Summit
The second Social TV Summit, organized by Andy Batkin, kicks off tomorrow (Wednesday) in NYC. Lost Remote (myself) will be there covering the event, and we will be streaming the live conference here on LostRemote.com like we did for the sold-out event this past summer in LA (this one’s also sold out).
Slingbox coming to Facebook ‘soon’
It seems like my prayers are starting to get answered regarding Slingbox’s lack of social integration. About a week after I wrote my open letter to the company asking them let their customers help them share Slingbox on the social web, Conrad Gomes, a Senior Software Engineer at Sling Media commented that, “we’re trying,” and shared a link.
TV Land puts episodes up for Facebook vote
Fans of “The King of Queens” were asked a few days ago on Facebook to vote for their favorite episodes, and now the top ten will air in a weekend marathon on TV Land. Out of 1.4 million total fans on the “The King of Queens” Facebook page — it was also shared from TV Land’s page — nearly 5,000 placed their votes, says TV Land in an email.
Who really owns TV talent’s social media accounts?
I’ve been asked this question more times by TV execs in the last year than any other: who really owns a personality’s social media accounts? Beyond Facebook and Twitter themselves, it’s a big grey area, but now there’s a case in the courts that claims that a Twitter account is a company trade secret.
TV stations battle for Facebook reach in Milwaukee
Three TV stations in Milwaukee are not only battling it out in the November ratings, but also for Facebook likes. At last check, WISN has 28,605 likes, WTMJ has 43,660, but WITI comes out on top with a whopping 85,153, ranked #7 in our leaderboard of the most popular Facebook pages in local TV. Impressive for the nation’s 35th largest market.
Facebook more popular than TV during work hours
We all know about Facebook’s phenomenal reach, but a new study underlines how big the social platform has become. A survey by Magid and eMarketer reveals that more people say they use Facebook than watch TV between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The numbers hold up for all age groups — except baby boomers.
To the charts, the first for Facebook and the second for TV:
