Mobile posts Dominate TV chatter on Facebook

As the battle for control of social media in and around the television between Facebook and Twitter continues, a report released today by Facebook in partnership with SecondSync, a social TV analytics provider shows that up to a 25% of television viewers post (on Facebook) about programs that are watching. Up until now the assumption was that most activity took place pre or post the shows airing and not in real time. Additionally the survey uncovered that 80% of TV-related chatter on the social network comes from a mobile device.

Other relevant findings from the analysis of real-time patterns and types of engagement included:

Real-time interactions: TV-related Facebook interactions happen during the show airing.

• Widespread reach: The scale of TV-related chatter seen on Facebook corresponds to the broad reach of the social network. Shows such as the Sound of Music Live and Breaking Bad generate 7.34 million and 4.47 million audience interactions respectively.
• Mobile engagement: 80 per cent of TV-related chatter on Facebook is generated from mobile devices.
• Multiple interaction opportunities. Posts are most closely aligned to real-time TV ‘events’; the bulk of TV conversations are contained in Comments; Likes have a long tail of engagement.

Accounding to SecondSync, they plan to continue to work closely with Facebook. Areas of future research will include investigating the extent to which Facebook drives TV tune-in, measuring the reach of TV-related interactions, and looking at the effectiveness of Facebook calls to action in TV advertising.

are contained in Comments; Likes have a long tail of engagement. MORE: Secondsync.com Feburary 2014 Whitepaper - "Watching with Friends"

Yahoo's IntoNow fades to Black

I guess I can remove this app from my iPad. Obviously I wasn't using it and apparently I wasn't alone. Yahoo's IntoNow second-screen app is shutting down effective March 31st. You may remember it as one of the many that popped up in the early part of the decade. Purchased by Yahoo in 2011, it offered Shazam like capabilities which gave it built-in auto content recognition (ACR) technology for recognizing television programming, a feature which first caught my attention and had me downloading it and trying it out. As with other second-screen apps it also allowed the users to check-in to the television shows they were watching and share their viewing habits with friends on Facebook and Twitter. Frankly, I found this to be a feature I never used. If I wanted to share info like this I would have asked them over and made popcorn! Ryan Lawler @ TechCrunch agrees writing, “The idea was as preposterous then as it seems now, but thanks to the relative early success of Foursquare back in those days, eager app makers were trying to get people to check into every damn thing.” MORE: techcrunch.com 01/29/14 - Yahoo Is Shutting Down IntoNow, Nearly Three Years After Acquisition by Ryan Lawler

The Fight to Win the SocialTV Battle

 Discussion/debate about Twitter and Facebook usage on the second screens while watching TV around the blogosphere has been at all time highs recently.  What seems somewhat clear is that socialTV is helping to push viewers back to live viewing in an age when DVRs and on-demand programming have pushed down ratings. "It's a great symbiotic relationship where we drive the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, and that viral conversation drives people back to watch our shows," said Viacom chief Philippe Dauman in an interview with Bloomberg. He offered up MTV's recent Video Music Awards as a prime example, a show that generated 18.5 million tweets (personally I thought that was do to Miley Cryus's foam finger and twerking but I'll give them that). The topic is getting even more hype do to the very open efforts by both Facebook's and Twitter as they clammer for the attention of TV networks and producers. At the end of September Facebook announced it would start sharing weekly data reports with ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS. The "big data" being shared includes the number of likes, comments and shares TV episodes get on the social network.

 

Yesterday the antisipated unveiling of Nielsen and Twitter first list of TV show rankings and ironically there was little connection between most watched shows and most talked about shows. Twitter reported Breaking Bad took the most tweets for the week of Sept. 23-29 while the top primetime show in total viewers was actually NBC's NFL Football: New England at Atlanta. The only show that did appear in both top ten lists for the week was The Voice, which ranked number two on Twitter's list and number eight and nine on the primetime rankings.

Initial analysis of TV activity shows that the entire Twitter TV audience for per episode is, on average, 50 times larger than the authors. If, for example, 2,000 people are tweeting about a program, 100,000 people are seeing those Tweets. Those 100,000 aren’t necessarily viewers of that particular TV episode. Nielsen notes that Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings are a separate set of metrics to traditional National TV Ratings. They do not change traditional National TV Ratings. But many believe they will complement each other.  To me this sounds like typical audience inflation many have debated with Nielsen data for years. The numbers are however one chooses to interpret them however the questions the advertisers need to ask is, are the RIGHT people seeing this stuff and are they buying anything?

Twitter Testing TV Trending Feature

As we have reported here on SMM before, Twitter is getting even more cozier with the television industry. The move is hardly a surprising one: In February, Twitter acquired social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs, a sign the site is doubling down on its social TV efforts. Twitter also teamed up with Nielsen in December to create the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating for the fall 2013 season, which will provide a "common benchmark" from which to measure a TV program's engagement.  So what Twitters next big bet on the TV business, a new feature that would see currently-trending television shows appear prominently within the timelines of users.

According to reports across the blogosphere, the 'Trending TV' experiment is currently being tested on a small percentage of iOS app users who are seeing a show-specific box at the top of their timelines when they refresh their feeds. In its essence, the proposition seems quite similar to second-screen apps like GetGlue and Zeebox that already use Twitter data to generate virtual chat rooms where viewers discuss ongoing shows.  Combine this with last month’s launch of Twitter TV Ad Targeting, a new service designed to enable Twitter and TV ad campaigns to be synchronized and its easy to see who is quickly becoming the next 800 pound gorilla?

Google Glass for Movie Making & other Possibilities

What would you do with $1,500? Well over 10,000 so-called Google Glass explorers are using them to search the Internet, write emails, check schedules, take pictures and shoot video in new ways never conceived. Now Google is enlisting film students from five Film colleges to help it explore how its wearable computing device can be used to make movies.  The participating schools are American Film Institute, California Institute of the Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Southern California are the participating schools. As part of its moviemaking experiment, Google will lend each school three pairs of Google Glass which the company says the schools will explore how to use Glass for documentary filmmaking, character development, location-based storytelling.

Obviously there are no limits to what they might do and according to Norman Hollyn, a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, "students will be encouraged to use Glass to tell stories incorporating the first-person point of view." He elaborated by stating that one model that students might follow is one explored in the film, "Timecode," by director Mike Figgis, which uses multiple cameras to capture different people simultaneously. Students will also be encouraged to try to use Glass's data overlays as a way of revealing elements of a story. At least two short films are expected to be done by the beginning of next year and Google plans to share an update in the fall of how the students have progressed.

Students are not the only ones experimenting with Glass. Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America wants to integrate Glass into its cars to give consumers a door-to-door transition between pedestrian directions and in-car GPS. Earlier this month Qualcomm Life and Palomar Health announced an incubator they have called "Glassomics. The goal of the project is to explore the potential of wearable computing in medicine by designing and building a Glass app which empowers physicians with real-time access to information about their patients, such as laboratory results and genomic information."

 Dan McNelis, co-founder of Dito, a company involved in application development for Google glass said that "a client has them working on using Glass to build information modeling", basically allowing to move from the whiteboard to an in the field 3D imaging system. Dan when on to say "imagine the benefit that a Google Glass’ point-of-view system offers to a construction worker who could walk around a work site, look at a support column and confirm through Google Glass that it’s in the right place and set at the right angle."

I would be remiss if I didn't mention this here. We talk about the "second screen" here on SMM quite a bit and those interactive apps for television, movies and videogames are very likely to finally take off through Glass. Currently, most of us (except me and some of my readers) don’t want to be messing with their smartphones or tablets to get the second screen information, because they have to look away from the program they are trying to watch. Google Glass eliminates this challenge by displaying the information through an overlay. Social interactions, box scores, actors information, popup video style content, all delivered over what you are watching personalized by what you choose to see and know.

Bottom line, this is game changing technology and it has many potential uses. Google Glass will ultimately speed up and personalize the way we receive and process information in ways we never thought possible. It is an exciting technology that will continue to evolve until it becomes firmly entrenched in our everyday lives. Like any new, game changing, technology, there will be bumps in the road as technical’s get ironed out and people adjust to new social norms. This will only serve to improve Glass and make it an even greater experience.

SocialTV comes to Dish Hopper Subscribers

Dish Network has been creating a stir in the broadcasting business this year with the launch of their Hopper Whole-Home ad skipping DVR system has announced the launch a new app called "Social" that it says is the industry’s “first and only set-top app that delivers on-screen social content relevant to the show or channel a viewer is watching.” The app enables customers to join social media conversations about shows that they are currently viewing allowing them to effectively multitask between watching a show and following social media posts about that show on the same screen. Accessible via Dish's "quick launch" bar, Social lets customers link up to four Twitter and four Facebook accounts to the app. Viewers have three options for the type of content displayed in the status bar: Now Watching shows the Twitter feed relevant to the show or channel the user is currently watching. My Twitter gives full Twitter functionality, and My Facebook displays the user's personal Facebook feed with full functionality. Perhaps even more interesting, the Social app contains a data bar at the bottom of the TV screen that displays information related to the program being watched like stats about the top areas in the country where people are tweeting about the program, the program's sentiment rating and percentage of Tweeters by gender and frequency of tweets. Two thumbs up for Dish on this new addition. I believe users will really enjoy this new apps as they have empowered consumers allowing them to follow social conversations and post in real-time without leaving their TV screen.

Turner To Launch Live Streaming for TNT, TBS

Not to be out done by yesterdays ABC live streaming announcement, Wednesday Turner Broadcasting released news about their newly created "Watch TNT" and "Watch TBS" apps for tablets and smartphones . The networks will both stream on-air content live across multiple platforms 24/7, available via the networks' websites as well as the apps.  Turner continues its push to become a year-round home to original programming as they also announced their upcoming new scripted and unscripted fare including series from top producers like Steven Spielberg, Diablo Cody, Denis Leary, Sylvester Stallone, Dick Wolf and Jamie Foxx.

I expect many more networks to soon join the ranks of HBO, Turner and ABC as more programmers and distributors reach "TV Everywhere" deals. Obviously these are designed to make content more available to subscribers and stave off competition for new OTT rivals. For now all of this seems great speaking from the perspective of one who travels a great deal. At some point however I see an upcoming post about the frustrations of manage 100's of individual apps in order to see my favorite shows while on the road. That app from DishTV looks like it will be the benchmark for other video providers in the future and these separate networks app's are simply a short term work around.

Roku App Coming to the Second Screen

Streaming video provider Roku is currently testing a second-screen application for tablets that the company hopes to release in the "near term," according to Ed Lee, vice president of content acquisition for Roku. He stated in a presentation at this week's OTTCON conference that the company is "thinking about the second screen quite a bit." He declined to provide specifics on the Roku's plans for the product, but said it would work on Roku owners' tablets and allow them to obtain additional information on the content they watch via their Roku device.

“We're evaluating it right now,” Lee said of the tablet application. “It's certainly coming in the near term.

More at: Media-Saver Tech Blog - Roku planning second-screen tablet app

NCAA March Madness Live App Breaking Records

Yes it’s that time of year again when college basketball captures the imagination of the country, brackets are filled out, brackets are busted, and fans everywhere are tuning in to all the excitement. With 68 teams, seven rounds, and 67 games, it’s no surprise that one screen just isn’t enough. Last year March Madness accounted for over two million tweets and Comscore reported that Turner Digital and CBSSports.com drew 20,012,000 and 15,938,000 million unique visitors.

No doubt those are all records that are about to be broken because CBS and Turner Sports relaunched the latest iteration of the NCAA March Madness Live App today. In addition to the app’s availability through the App Store and Google Play platforms, fans can access this content online via the ncaa.commarchmadness, CBSSports.com, and bleacherreport.com websites. The major features comprise: full game replays, real-time game alerts, video highlights, real-time tournament brackets, and personal channel lineup facets, and live radio broadcast.
Hear and see all about it right from Turner Sports and CBS executives as they discuss their multiscreen coverage plans for the "March Madness" NCAA men's college basketball tournament: MCN Original Video -- CBS, Turner Sports Ready For 'March Madness' or better yet, get the app: Apple or Android

UPDATE 03/26 - Apparently I wasn't the only one that love's this year’s app. I found that I was so impressed with it that many times it was acting as my primary screen as I quickly switched between games in the second and third rounds. As linear TV coverage produced the best Nielsen numbers for the first week of the tournament in 20 years, the digital presentation of NCAA March Madness Live was also setting new all-time highs through the tournament’s first week, generating 36.6 million live video streams across online and mobile, (tablets and smartphones), double the 18.3 million for the entire event in 2012, according to Turner digital officials. That equated to than 10 million hours of live video consumed across digital properties during the opening week of the tournament, up 198% from 2012.

CBS Connect 2.0

Leslie Moonves, President/CEO of CBS has historically been the most resistant of the big networks to offer its content to alternative platforms. With this launch as well as the recent licensing deals with Hulu Plus and Amazon, the network is now pushing hard into the digital circle. Back in January, the company launched CBS Connect app, which offered up social media real-time conversation and synced second-screen experiences -- but no full episodes. Finally yesterday they announced a new iOS app that allows users to stream full episodes of the network's primetime lineup (8 days after broadcast), along with daytime and late night programming the day after broadcast. Android and Windows 8 versions will be released later this year. The the company said it will integrate with the existing CBS Connect app by the start of the fall season, so viewers can access a slew of second-screen features, including social feeds and bonus content tied to TV shows like CSI, Criminal Minds, NCIS: Los Angeles, and Hawaii Five-O. More @MediaDailyNews 3/14 - CBS Starts CBS App, And Full-Episode TV Player

Netflix Adds Facebook Integration

Netflix has finally released a new feature that allows subscribers to let their Facebook friends know what television shows and movies they are watching while also seeing friends’ viewing activity. The company has been trying to integrate Facebook elements in the U.S. for quite some time spending over a year lobbying Congress to amend a 1988 law called the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) that previously made such an app illegal in the United States. This past December that all changed when Congress passed a bill which updated the VPPA to accommodate the Facebook integration. According to Facebook, international users have had a sharing option for some time but the application restricted the sharing functionality. Now international users will be able to upgrade to the new version as well.
The video link at the top of this post (provided by Netflix) explains the new features.

The Good, Bad & Ugly of the Second Screen

Yahoo's INTO Now

Ok full disclosure... in my paying job, during the past year I have worked with more and more companies that are involved in the Second Screen space. As a connoisseur (insert nerd) of all things tech, I've collected quite a few of them but in general my overall feeling is that most tend to lack intuitive UI's and frankly are just poorly thought out from a user’s perspective. So it brings me to ask, do they actually offer anything to the viewer? Well that's the question TV and movie critic Noel Murray recently explored for Grantland.  A self-professed second screen novice, Murray spent the month of February trying out various apps.  After using them to accompany his both live and pre-recorded viewing, Murray's general perspective was that they didn't really enhance his viewing experience as promised.  Read his story: 03/05 - The 'Second Screen': Is This App Really Necessary?

The new Fox Digital Syndication Network

Fox announced Tuesday that it is launching a syndication network that will allow outside second-screen TV app providers to use Fox's sync-to-broadcast experiences, which are currently only available in Fox Now apps. The new digital network is also designed to allow Fox to create, manage and syndicate content to smart TVs, connected TVs and television service providers looking to increase audience engagement. Most importantly, this is significant news to leading second-screen companies like: Shazam, Viggle, ConnecTV and NextGuide which will gain access Fox's social, behind-the-scenes and interactive content around Fox shows while synced to the broadcast.


According to Viggle's press release (linked at bottom), "Fox has some of the most loyal, invested fans on the planet, so we want them to have the richest, most immersive experience possible with our shows and our brand partners -- no matter which TV app or platform they use," said David Wertheimer, president, digital, Fox Broadcasting. "By syndicating the content we've built around our show broadcasts, we're extending the Fox experience to viewers across all digital platforms and providing our partners with new and valuable opportunities around our content." See More:
Viggle - 02/26 - FOX LAUNCHES NEW DIGITAL CONTENT SYNDICATION NETWORK or B&C - 02/26 - Fox to Launch Digital Content Syndication Network by Tim Baysinger

Monetizing Second-Screens the Zeebox Way

Second-screen apps have been trying to figure out how to turn a profit from the growing chatter around TV and Zeebox thinks they have the answer. Earlier this week they launched an automated advertising platform called SpotSynch that will show users targeted digital advertisements simultaneously with specific TV programs and commercials. The goal of the new product is to create an immediate path to engagement, said Jason Forbes, exec VP-managing director of Zeebox USA. Traditional TV ads create demand and are a call to action, ads on Zeebox let viewers go to brands' websites, get more information, enter a sweepstakes or take a poll or quiz. The hope is that playing Zeebox ads off commercials will increase the impact on viewers while creating a monetization model the company can bank on.

First launched in the App Store in September, Zeebox is a second-screen TV app. Using it, viewers can see comprehensive TV listings, information about favorite television personalities, and, of course, it comes with a social element. According to the company, Zeebox has been downloaded about 1.2 million times since it arrived in the U.S. Full disclosure, I use Zeebox on a ongoing basis, at to onset, I do not have any issues with the concept behind SpotSynch. I actually feel it will add to my viewing experience and I like the idea of having consistent ads on two platforms providing they are relevant. Second screen apps, by their very nature, are supposed to add to the TV viewing experience however, if SpotSynch becomes too obtrusive to my television viewing experience, my opinion and future usage of the app is very likely to change.

Second Screen: Past, Present & Future

Remember way back (like maybe 2005) when there was only one screen that TV broadcasters and Cable networks needed to fill. These days, it's all about the two-screen experience. People have been watching television with their laptops, smartphones and tablets in hand for a while now. But last year, Networks and show Producers alike tried harder than ever to bring television to a second screen. Even the 2012 Summer Olympics received the second screen treatment with its very own Android and iOS apps, which let users catch live streams of events, access stats and more from the comfort of their couches. If you're starting to feel overwhelmed by the multitude of options, you're not alone so during the recent CES show I took the opportunity to spend part of my day at Second Screen Summit to talk shop and discuss the future of the industry.

Put aside for a moment the tweets and check-ins that have been typically considered the currency of social TV, despite uncertain value in driving actual ratings. TV networks in 2013 are going to make further efforts to seamlessly connect their traditional programming with the second screen in a way that reinforces both venues. That might mean more entries in the model of Bravo's "Top Chef" companion "Last Chance Kitchen" -- an online and on-demand series that pits eliminated contestants against each other for the chance to re-enter the main show. Also expect to see more like CBS'S successful CBS Connect, which infused NCIS: Los Angeles, CSI and Hawaii Five-O with second screen features. With an iPad in hand, NCIS fans can review evidence in-sync with the show, read up on suspects, rifle through maps, interact through social networks and more

Another tend shows more traditional TV shows integrating live on-screen results from polls and games conducted via apps or the web. Successful attempts will provide entertainment with substance and stakes but at this juncture no one company has the preverbal "silver bullet". What will more likely happen over the next 12-18 months is consolidation when major providers like Comcast, Dish, AT&T and others who have (or are about too) launched tablet apps with guide various remote control functionality will then buy the GetGlue's and Viggle's or whatever to incorporate their functionalities so that the operators can more effectively compete with each other." Clearly many companies are vying for a foothold in our living rooms and for the foreseeable future we will see the ecosystem continue to grow and diversify. Personally I think it's an exciting time in the business. More to come on this subject this year but for now if you seek additional info see:
Engadget: The state of the Second Screen (01/11) or Mashable: Second Screen

ConnectTV's Local Ad Network

ConnecTV has unveiled a national and local ad network for second-screen TV ads. The company announced that over 400 ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and CW national and local affiliates will be the first participants in the new ad network, which allows advertisers to pair their TV spots with a synchronized experience on tablets and smartphones. Available via ConnectTV's free second-screen app or any ConnecTV syndication partner, the new Ad Sync platform allows brands to deliver extra goods such as promotional offers, contests, and marketing alerts, as well as the ability for viewers to watch product-related videos, find the nearest store, or even purchase what they're seeing on TV. At launch, ConnecTV says it's offering an exclusive "Charter Advertising" program, which will let brands and agencies to customize companion-marketing experiences and lead second-screen research panels, among other things. The new ad network will be sold by both ConnecTV and its broadcast partners, which include Belo, Cox, Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Meredith, Post-Newsweek, and Raycom.

425 Million Web Connected Devices in the US

According to the NPD Group there are 425 million devices connected to the web inside US households. The largest number of these devices are computers at 183.8 million and as one could assume traditional computer's share of connected in-home devices is diminishing, fueled by the rise of connected gaming consoles (39 million), Blu-ray players (12.9 million), and TVs (16 million). Portable devices such as smartphones (133 million) and tablets (31.8 million) are witnessing hockey stick growth curves and the NPD says that by the end of 2013, there will be a shift toward "screen-sharing across devices." Much like what users can do with Apple's AirPlay, which allows them to throw content from one screen to another; this shared screen experience is converging device ecosystems and will allow for OTT content to become even more prominent on the TV. We are certain to see a multitude of these up and coming devices at next week’s CES. More: NPD.com