Seconds Behind

This article is so great! I’ll tell you all a bit about it but you HAVE to read it for yourself, the ideas and data is incredible!

It is about Social TV data and how that is becoming the new way for TV shows to understand their viewers. The first paragraph is “For decades, TV shows have lived or died based on their Nielsen ratings. But the advent of sites like Facebook has spawned an emerging industry of companies that say they can measure more than just the sheer size of an audience.” 

Looking at what people post on social media sites about tv shows can give so much more information to producers than just numbers. They now can know what people who are watching think about the show, instead of just knowing that they are watching. 

Although these new companies that give the social media data to producers are not looking to replace Nielsen, they have definitely become a completely new kind of service that is meeting needs and providing some new jobs for the population. 

There are about 70 of these companies, one of them being Trendrr.TV. There are also some statistics in this article about why people start watching and keep watching shows based on social tv. It was surprising to me that, “According to a TV Guide survey of 10,000 people, 17 percent said they began watching a show - and 33 percent said they continued to watch - because of a mention on social networks or other online sites.” Go internet, go!!!

ellenforlife:

The reality is that young people aren’t just watching the news or other shows; they are going a step beyond. Whether is blogging about it, commenting on it, or using hashtags, social TV is becoming prominant for many stations. Personally, I have seen my local news channels use hashtags on their screens to encourage viewers to go online and check this out, to start a discussion on the events they’re reporting.

This aricle cites the thoughts of Twitter’s UK general manager Tony Wang. Wang says that social TV is unavoidable. He does, however, think that broadcasters can “harness that social TV energy.” The article looks further into spikes of hashtagging depending on popular shows on stations. A typical trend is to have people (such as Survivor presenter Jeff Probst) tweet while on the air. This usually tends to increase the number of tweets about that show.

The article provides some very interesting points, especially from the angle of someone who knows social media like Twitter so well. I can fairly confidently say that we are going to be seeing more social TV and ways we can hook into our favorite shows.

I love this post about the way social tv occurs naturally. People always love to talk about what they like. Love it ellenforlife!

We were talking about this in Mass Media class and it turned out I needed a news event speech for my Public Speaking class. So… here it is. Check it out please!