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"

Facebook vs. Twitter in the battle over Media Exposure

It looks like Facebook is going back into the ring in the fight for television exposure with Twitter. On Monday the company released two new conversation search tools designed to give news, sporting, TV entertainment organizations and marketers more insight into the real-time social conversation occurring on Facebook.  This effort is part of a partnership they have with tech company Mass Relevance to help its media clients utilize the new tools. As reported here in an earlier post, with Facebook having also launched hashtag support to unify topical conversations, along with testing trending topics, it not be far-fetched to believe that producers would gladly utilize these tools to integrate discussions that people are saying right into their shows. Certainly for some, importing user comments from Facebook could be a welcome improvement over Twitter since there aren’t any character limitations. Will viewers be open to hearing more significant discussions instead of trying to interpret the statement based on 140 characters? Time will tell.

Nielsen: Tweets Actually Influences TV Viewing... Really!

No surprise but this week Nielsen released research that conclusively states that an increase in Twitter commentary about a TV show can increase viewership of that same show as it airs live.  By analyzing minute-to-minute trends in Nielsen’s live TV ratings and tweets for 221 broadcast primetime program episodes using Nielsen’s SocialGuide, the study found that live TV ratings had a meaningful impact in related tweets among 48% of the episodes sampled.  The results also showed that the volume of tweets caused significant changes in live TV ratings among 29% of the episodes.

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.

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.

Mass Relevance - Dynamic Mosaic

One of many cool products unveiled at this week's SXSW comes from social curation technology provider Mass Relevance. They released Dynamic Mosaic a product which integrates real-time social content from multiple sources - including Instagram, Facebook, Vine, Twitter and Google+ - into a branded experience with depth and motion and the best part is it's all in real time. The company says the product allows brands to determine placement of sponsored and named accounts. Aiming to mimic the real-time flow of social conversations, a steady stream moving right to left will bring forth the latest social content. It will slow down when necessary to play Vine videos and highlight photos, before moving to the next piece of content. According to Ann Sommerlath, IMAX's VP of Corporate Communications, they have signed on to be one of the first Mass Relevance clients. She states: “We are very excited to partner with Mass Relevance to debut an entirely new kind of visualization and experience. We believe this experience is a great way to capture real-time conversations occurring at the conference while also engaging fans worldwide.” See the SXSW IMAX Dynamic Mosaic Live demo

The Walking Dead Swarm Twitter

The Darewin Agency created a clever social media campaign via Tweeter and Facebook to make The Walking Dead a hit on France's NT1 TV network. @AdFreak - 03/05 Zombies Swarm around infected hashtag in Clever Campaign for the Walking Dead