social viewing
TVGuide debuts revamped ‘Watchlist’ with social ties
TVGuide.com rolled out a revamped “Watchlist” today that aims to take the complexity out of finding your favorite shows across TV, video on demand and online services like Netflix. Watchlist allows you to import your “liked” shows on Facebook (and your favorite actors and sports teams) and add others as you go, resulting in a [...]
‘Project Runway’ to add Twitter voting in new season
When the new season of Project Runway debuts Thursday night on Lifetime, fans will be encouraged to cast their votes via Twitter for their favorite designers. Using unique hashtags for each contestant, Project Runway will track the votes from viewers throughout the season to designate “Fan Favorites.” It’s the first time an A+E Networks show [...]
Mass Relevance partners with MTV Networks
One company that continues to emerge as the behind-the-scenes facilitator enabling TV brands to become more social has been Austin-based Mass Relevance. Today, the fourteen person company announced a partnership with MTV Networks to “to curate and analyze real-time social content across a wide range of brand experiences,” including web, mobile, tablet and live shows. [...]
Guest Post: Google Plus pulls TV station account
UPDATE: +BreakingNews, one of the first brands to join Google Plus, has had its account pulled as well. It had 20,000 followers when it was shut down. +CoryBergman and +StephanieClary are posting the Breaking News updates on their personal accounts until Breaking News is re-established on Google Plus. This is a guest post from Kimberly [...]
GetGlue goes global with UK’s Channel 4
The TV check-in service GetGlue announced its first international partner today, teaming up with Channel 4 in the UK to offer stickers and rewards for shows on its youth orientated channel, E4. The first show is Beaver Falls, which premieres this season on July 27th, as well as “limited edition” stickers for upcoming seasons of [...]
NBC News teams with Facebook for Republican debate
On the Sunday before the New Hampshire Republican primary, NBC’s David Gregory will host a live Republican debate that lets Facebook users participate in the event. The special Meet the Press will also stream live on Facebook, msnbc.com and NECN.com. “While it’s been said that all politics is local, today it may be more accurate [...]
World Cup match sets Twitter, ESPN records
Japan’s penalty-kick win over the U.S. in the World Cup final broke Twitter’s record with 7,196 tweets-per-second. The previous high of 6,939 was hit on New Year’s in Japan, so it stands to reason that Japan would help break the record once again, intermixed with tweets from disappointed U.S. fans. Over at ESPN, the game [...]
CNN streams its air live online, mobile
CNN has rolled out a new video player this morning with the ability for authenticated TV viewers to watch the cable news network and HLN live online and on CNN’s iPad and iPhone apps. Here’s a screenshot of Anderson Cooper airing on an iPad: Before watching, users have to confirm they’re subscribers of a participating [...]
BeeTV integrates social TV into new apps
Social TV company BeeTV is bringing together TV viewing, checkins and social conversation into a new iPhone app, and it also released an improvement to its existing iPad app. BeeTV HD integrates with Facebook and Twitter enabling users to see what their friends and other social webbies are saying about the show. The interface is [...]
How DirecTV is keeping ‘Damages’ alive for fans
Season four of the critically acclaimed show Damages will premier it’s fourth season tonight exclusively on DirecTV’s AUDIENCE network, channel 239. After three seasons on FX, the show was canceled. But now the satellite provider came to the beck and call of many of the show’s super fans as they scooped up the property and offered [...]
Los Angeles, social media prepare for “Carmageddon”
Los Angeles, home of notorious traffic jams, is preparing for a potential doozy. People are calling this weekend’s closure of 10 miles of the 405 “Carmageddon.” What’s happening is 10 miles of the very busy highway will be shut down to traffic as part of a reconstruction project. The big question is whether the work [...]
Roku brings Facebook pictures and videos to the TV
Roku, the streaming video player, is adding the ability to see Facebook videos and pictures right on your TV. There are already several channels you can see on Roku, and Facebook Photos has been one of them. Now the channel is getting a big upgrade and it’s another example of internet video coming to the [...]
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 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 [...]
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….
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: [...]
Detroit station taps #backchannel to make ‘good news’
Don’t just complain about sad news – do something about it! That’s what viewers of and staffers from WXYZ in Detroit did, using the power of social media in the community. Using the Twitter hashtag #backchannel and Facebook, a group of more than a hundred people gathered to help clean up Detroit. The group partnered [...]
The Voice steps up social media for final shows
NBC’s The Voice has been airing live episodes (East Coast) as it nears its season finale this Wednesday night, and the show is featuring a social media room to shine a spotlight on live Twitter reaction. Hosted by “social media guru” Alison Haislip — sporting a phone, then a tablet — the room features live [...]
Google takes on Facebook with new social media service
Google is introducing a new social media site, one that takes aim at privacy concerns about Facebook. The Google+ Project is in invitation mode only — and it’s not accepting any more for the moment — but a tour of the site provides a good overview. For starters, it provides a way to set up [...]
