This Week in #SocialTV The Marriage Edition

Posted by & filed under This Week In #SocialTV.

The premature death knell of movie theaters and radio reminds us that TV and SocialTV still have long lives ahead of them. Will Nielsen’s counting help them count again? Yahoo! asks for Tumblr’s hand in marriage and Time Warner starts dating Hulu.

 

Is TV Dead? Not so Fast! “Sitting in 1952 it would have been easy to envision a time when radio would go silent and every movie theater in America would close its doors. That did not come to pass.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-mcdonough/television-ratings-decline_b_3268129.html

 

“TV will change from what we have known for decades – it’s ripe for it – there’s too much visual ritalin, too many commercials, and, as narrative developments show in the Transmedia world, stories are going to get more complex on TV… as they should in the future.”

http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/05/reports-of-social-tvs-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/

 

“Broadcast and cable networks say Nielsen is leaving out as much as 12 percent of viewers, because it hasn’t perfected a way to capture those who watch on the Web.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-16/twitter-talk-dominates-tv-ad-buying-blitz

 

“ABC will participate in Nielsen’s first trial to incorporate mobile video apps into the firm’s online ratings, as the network tries to get a handle on audiences accessing content across multiple devices.”

http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/abc-to-test-mobile-tv-measurement-with-nielsen-1200481089/

 

“Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt has been talking with other cable-TV providers about making a joint bid for the Web-TV hub Hulu.”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/high_speed_chase_CBxo8K1pg4Ptq169t8fNKJ

 

“Networks that want a strong position in the future will be great application developers. And the applications will be unique to the content.”

http://www.thestar.com/life/technology/2013/05/15/netflix_ceo_reed_hastings_weighs_on_future_of_internet_tv.html

 

“Only 5% of video-watching households are Zero-TV households, but 23% percent of Netflix subscribers had cancelled their cable or satellite subscriptions.”

http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/2013/05/hdtv-expert-zerotv-households-and-the-secondseason-crunch.php

 

“Just like a regular TV network, Amazon ordered up a bunch of pilot shows this year, and will end up making a series out of some of them.”

http://allthingsd.com/20130517/amazon-kills-zombies-keeps-john-goodman-as-it-plans-first-season-of-web-series/

 

“Increase stickiness by offering exclusive content available only through the second screen.”

http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/three-ways-cbs-at-t-and-viggle-are-leveraging-the-second-screen

 

“Shaw Media unveiled today an innovative way for some movie advertisers to engage viewers with a dramatic new approach to commercial breaks known as a live on screen integration.”

http://www.broadcastermagazine.com/news/shaw-media-introduces-live-on-screen-integration/1002311377/

 

“Just a year ago, when you thought of a TV series, you would probably still look at it in terms of episodes and storylines. Now, you’d be more likely to look at it as a series of moments, each with a social dimension and a continuing narrative in the non-linear world.”

http://blog.mipworld.com/2013/05/kerry-taylor-philip-oferrall-why-multi-peak-shows-like-geordie-shore-are-social-tv-gold/

 

“People are making financial bets, if you will. They’re putting their money to work before knowing anything. The risk is certainly not worth the reward,” says Networked Insights founder and CEO Dan Neely, who equates buying ad time at the upfronts to gambling.”

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682958/an-analytics-company-ambushes-upfronts-to-point-out-the-inherent-flaws-in-the-model#1

 

 Social

“In tomorrow’s world, we’ll already be living online all the time, so the notion of “sharing” may change.”

http://allthingsd.com/20130503/when-people-live-their-lives-online-the-concept-of-sharing-changes-says-snapchats-evan-spiegel-video/

 

Is Marissa Mayer About to Buy Tumblr for $1 Billion?

http://mashable.com/2013/05/16/yahoo-tumblr/

http://allthingsd.com/20130516/will-yahoo-try-to-get-its-cool-again-by-doing-a-deal-for-tumblr/

 

Second-Screen

“TV will become a totally different experience for consumers in the next couple of years, with integrated and interactive tools and hardware made for optimizing browsing on a TV screen.”

http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/the-diy-website-revolution-will-be-televised

 

“We can stream movies on Netflix. We can buy TV episodes on iTunes. So why, in 2013, can’t we watch live television on our smartphones, tablets and computers without a pricey cable subscription?”

http://business.time.com/2013/05/16/the-fight-for-streaming-tv/

 

“Rather than limiting the streaming distribution of its shows to Apple TV through Netflix or Hulu, the new CW app will offer users direct access to full episodes of the network’s lineup”

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2419121,00.asp

 

“GetGlue’s approach to the second screen has been to create activity feeds for each show. Each feed is a mix of comments, video, pictures, re-caps, gifs, memes and more.”

http://www.iptv-news.com/2013/05/getglue-ceo-people-can-find-second-screen-ads-interesting/

 

Squawka’s european second-screen experience = cash.

http://www.theuksportsnetwork.com/squawkas-second-screen-experience-receives-significant-investor-funding

 

“ABC’s announcement that it’ll allow live streaming of its shows via its iPad and iPhone app.”

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/200405/cable-and-broadcast-in-tv-everywheres-bed-in-str.html#axzz2TaeX866a

 

“SimulTV combines streaming video content, Facebook and Twitter integration and video chat all into one web browser-based interface that you can access anywhere.”

http://mashable.com/2013/05/09/simultv-watch-tv-with-friends/

 

Mobile

“M-commerce sales will account for 15% of total commerce sales in 2013.”

http://holykaw.alltop.com/global-mobile-advertising-statistics-infographic

 

 

This Week in #Journalism: It’s all About the Data

Posted by & filed under This Week in #Journalism.

Mobile, local, amateur. The future of online journalism seems to be fast, atomized and crowdsourced but are the mountains of data we create every day accurate?

Social + mobile = the “dynamite”

“Thorough and reliable sourcing takes time, and while the papers of record focus on assembling traditional articles, less trustworthy sources take to tweeting with the slightest of substantiation.”

http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/05/social-mobile-the-dynamite-combo-itv-news-needed-to-build-reputation-and-audience/

 

“Local broadcast TV viewers are 85% more likely to post photos and videos than users of all media — as compared to radio, newspapers, broadcast and cable television. But local newspapers  are higher than all other media in generating retweets — with a 54% greater likelihood.”

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/200078/local-tv-viewers-crazy-for-social-media-newspaper.html#axzz2TaeX866a

 

“Amateur journalists is an oxymoron. Those gossiping via Twitter and Facebook are not journalists. If news professionals were to put stock in such chatter without verification, they would be wrong, but there is little evidence of that really happening. The wild frontier of social media shouldn’t be conflated with the established world of journalism.”

http://www.montereyherald.com/opinion/ci_23263480/peter-funt-social-media-not-real-threat-journalism

 

“Though many people do still read news online that has been produced by traditional outlets, many users are now expressing that they feel the traditional outlets are ‘too slow’ or that their reporting has ‘too much of an agenda’.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayson-demers/how-social-media-is-suppo_b_3239076.html

 

Now the New Yorker magazine says it can help journalists, and their sources, cover their tracks. It is rolling out an electronic tip box it says will give leakers and tipsters the ability to cloak their identity when they reach out to the magazine.

http://allthingsd.com/20130515/the-new-yorker-launches-strongbox-an-open-source-anonymous-tip-tool-built-by-aaron-swartz/

 

As the media have become more social and thereby more “networked” — whether they like it or not — smart publishers like The Guardian and ProPublica have taken advantage of this phenomenon to crowdsource knowledge in a variety of ways.

http://paidcontent.org/2013/05/14/crowdsourcing-is-here-to-stay-now-its-about-building-tools-for-networked-journalism/

 

“We live in age where more data is collected than ever and that data will be used for setting policy goals and decision-making. But we also all sit behind computer screens and databases are not rocket science anymore, so if you’re not using data for investigations, you’re missing out.”

http://memeburn.com/2013/05/why-data-driven-documentation-is-the-future-of-online-journalism/

 

Organizations and journalists using sensor technology to create their own real-time data and then report on it. But is sensor journalism feasible or sustainable?

http://paidcontent.org/2013/05/16/is-sensor-journalism-feasible-or-even-ethical-columbias-tow-center-hopes-to-find-out/

 

“Yahoo announced a new partnership with Twitter Thursday that will see select Tweets being folded into the Yahoo newsfeed.”

http://socialmediatoday.com/alex-baker/1471806/yahoo-integrating-tweets-its-newsfeed

 

How Much Data Does the World Create Every Year?

http://www.pinfographics.org/ig/physical-size-of-big-data/

 

How the New York Times can fight BuzzFeed & reinvent its future

“Now, if they can actually overcome their angst — and it hurts me to say this — they can change the conversation in the media business away from the increasingly shallow content and instead bring the focus back to quality and in-depth journalism, which is their stock and trade.”

http://gigaom.com/2013/05/10/how-the-new-york-times-can-fight-buzzfeed-reinvent-its-future/

 

Here it is: In 2012, newspapers lost $16 in print ads for every $1 earned in digital ads. And it’s getting worse, according to a new report by Pew. In 2011, the ratio was just 10-to-1.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/this-is-the-scariest-statistic-about-the-newspaper-business-today/274125/

 

Moreover, 59% of Americans age 18-24, the youngest group of adults surveyed, access newspaper content across all platforms during the same time period, the study found.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2013/10735/7-in-10-adults-access-content-from-newspaper-media-each-week

 

The web is awash with all kinds of news. With people’s access to internet dramatically increasing in recent times, more and more newspaper readers are switching camp, putting a big question mark on the survival of print media.

http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=54487

Planned CDN Migration

Posted by & filed under Announcements.

This is a service announcement for our planned CDN migration. We will be migrating to a new provider Tuesday, May 14 at 6PM PST. There should be no interruption of service. However we will be watching closely to to make sure no customers are affected. Please follow our RTB_Status Twitter account for realtime updates before, during and after.

Street Teams for the Burbs and more in SocialTV

Posted by & filed under This Week In #SocialTV.

This week’s Social TV news includes the latest from the Upfronts, Tupperware TV Parties, the differences between Brits, Canucks and ‘Mericans in Social Media Consumption, Infographics on how women and women consume media differently and a great SocialTV in ’82 find from Ad Age.

 

Upfronts

Don’t be fooled by the shrimp cocktail. The real upfront isn’t taking place on the stages of the many glitzy presentations stuffing the calendar between now and late May. via Variety.

 

Ryan Seacrest at the E! Upfront: web traffic to E! up 38% year over year. via Lost Remote.

 

Syfy is betting even more on social TV, adding some element of interactivity to nearly every new show it presented to advertisers and media buyers at its upfront. via Ad Age.
91 percent of Bravo viewers say the network offers an outlet to voice their opinions and thoughts on Bravo and its shows, again ranking first among its competitors. via Lost Remote.

 

Discovery is anticipating more than 100 hours of live on-air social integrations across their networks. via Lost Remote.

 

There’s a Difference Between Second Screen vs Social TV?

“Simply tweeting to say ‘I’m watching this football game,’ is no more social than being stranded on an island and throwing out a message in a bottle saying ‘I’m stuck on this island.’ That message wouldn’t be social until someone actually responded,” Markham explains. via Digital Trends.

 

Comedy Central is gearing up to host a comedy festival on [Twitter], centered around the hashtag #ComedyFest. via The Next Web.

 

While most of the interactive content is triggered by the progression of each episode of “Da Vinci’s Demons,” users have the ability to catch up and access the interactive content for a particular episode at any time by download after premiere using the Manual Sync option. via Lost Remote.

 

Discovery Plus, an interactive second-screen experience, delivers premium bonus interactive content synced live with your favorite shows. via iClarified.

 

Kiddie-cabler Sprout said it would launch one new original series that would let kids play a game along with the show via tablet or mobile device. via Variety.

 

What programmers foresee is an opportunity to profit from bundling the 2nd screen as value add to their TV buys. via ITVT.

 

Street Teams in the Burbs?

House Party’s social TV business has more than doubled since 2012, with networks including AMC, CW, HGTV, MSNBC, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, and high profile TV shows like Mad Men, Rachel Maddow, The GRAMMY Awards, MAKERS: Women Who Make America and Adventure Time all signing on to get consumers talking and tuning in. via WSJ.

 

New Data this Week

New study shows social media hogging more than a quarter of online time. Entertainment comes in second to Social. via Deseret News.

 

According to the study, 80% of Americans who own a smartphone or tablet frequently use their devices while watching TV, and 40% of these people visit a social network while glued to the tube. via Fast Company.

 

A recent report by the Media Technology Monitor found that 58 per cent of Canadians said they have multitasked with an Internet-connected device while watching TV, and 26 per cent said they were always or almost always using the Internet while watching TV. via The Globe and Mail.

 

Siskel and Ebert do Social TV in ’82

“In this brief clip, you can see the hallmarks of modern-day Social TV: snark, drive-by opinions, a certain meta sensibility…” and ”history’s first live review of a television show still in progress.” via Ad Age.

 

Infographics

Battle of the (social) sexes. Women win. via Mobile Marketing Watch.

Battle of the Sexes

 

2013, when smartphones hold 60% of the UK user base, and you have 58% female smartphone users and 42% male. via Read Write Web.

More Women Own Cell Phones than Men

More Women Own Cell Phones than Men

 

 

This Week in Social News

Posted by & filed under This Week in #Journalism.

We’re big fans of Newspapers around here. In addition to #SocialTV we’ve got a good, strong presence in #SocialNews. Or at least we pretend to; so much of what we’re doing is new territory for both us and the publishers we serve. To make sense of it, we’re putting out a once-weekly “This Week in Social News” post. The “This Week” posts are roll-ups of the news you might have missed for the week where we organize, link to and quote from a number of sources to round out the week’s news with some perspective and tranquility a Saturday Morning provides. Without further ado…

Platforms for Talent. Yes, please. 

This is one of the best-written “solutions” to the problem publishers face in online publishing we’ve found.

“What if news organizations confronted the reality that nearly all media will be ‘social media’ a decade hence?…What if news organizations acknowledged this — or even got out in front of it, ahead of the curve this time — and organized themselves as platforms for talent?” Link is here.

Down Goes Frazier?

The NY Times, which is the publishing anomaly more often than not, is flipping where it once flopped. Why? It’s all about the pre-roll.

Starting today, all videos on NYTimes.com will be available to all readers, regardless of their subscriber status.

 

This Week in Social TV

Posted by & filed under This Week In #SocialTV.

Obviously this week’s biggest SocialTV news is the Boston Marathon coverage. It’s a little too soon for us to write about it, honestly. It’s unprecedented and will take some time to provide insights which are, indeed, coming in fast. The best of the rest is below.

Deep Dive: Twitter #music

Our view: #music is a good, made for mobile app for artist discovery if you follow a lot of artists. It is a decent music listening tool if you are a premium subscriber of Spotify or Rdio. The search tool is poor but the focus of the app is more on what is trending than what you want to hear. In short: use it to discover. Quotes from coverage follow…

Via Mashable

“Discovery Powerhouse for Your iPhone”

“Twitter Music is the best music discovery app I’ve seen on mobile. That’s because of three factors: First, it’s easy and inviting to use. Second, it doesn’t inundate you with too much choice. And third, suggestions from friends are self-curating.”

“The search function is crap. It’s slow and totally unclear what it’s for. Searching for obvious titles (“Thriller” for example) doesn’t bring up anything related to the artist you’re looking for. It appears to be purely for searching Twitter for artist profiles.”

“Taken as it’s intended, though, Twitter Music does its job extremely well. It shows you what the world is listening to as well as what your world is listening to. It’s much easier to quickly immerse yourself in new music than, say, the new Myspace. Sharing and connections are nice, but the music should be front and center, and Twitter gets that.”

Via TNW

“Rdio and Spotify subscribers can log into their existing accounts, however, and enjoy full tracks provided they’re already available in the companies’ respective libraries.”

ReadWriteWeb

“Great For Artists; Less So For Fans”

“#Music encourages you to follow bands and musicians, which of course can lead to longterm engagement and even sales.”

“The music-listening part is only really worthwhile to those of us who pay for premium Spotify or Rdio accounts. Otherwise, we’re left with a mere iTunes snippet and the option to buy the whole track. And if you do have Rdio or Spotify, you’re going to continue to use those services’ apps for the majority of your listening. Listening to music isn’t the main draw of Twitter #Music, just a very nice touch.”

“On the whole, Twitter #Music is a decent app. If you like music enough to subscribe to a streaming service and are interested in finding new music, this is a pretty good, social-fueled way to do it. If your tastes are more particular and nuanced, tools with more complex algorithms and granular data points are likely to be more useful to you. Either way, it’s worth taking it for a spin.”

You Won’t Believe This Social Media Trend
Via MediaPost

“According to a new study, freshmen women spend nearly half their day — 12 hours — engaged in some form of media use, particularly texting, music, the Internet and social networking.”

Keep an Eye On: Viewster
Via PaidContent

“Watch out, Crackle: Zurich-based VOD startup Viewster is starting to rack up more views than some of its established U.S. competitors.”

Second Screen, Yadda Yadda

An inside look at Starz companion app for ‘DaVinci’s Demons’.

Is network content streaming affecting pay tv subscriptions?

Are second screen options facing a crossing the chasm moment?

Can Twitter elevate the “second screen” with live video? 

USA Launches “My Moment” Social Campaign
Via LostRemote

“While the TV show follows nine people as they get a second chance to pursue their dream career, the social campaign will help viewers follow through on their own dreams.”

Let Your Ad Departments Know…

If an advertiser is looking to launch a viral campaign, they could get a bump from your built-in audience.

“Google’s Susan Wojcicki says the viral success of a Pepsi prank video shows how online ad viewing is becoming a voluntary experience where marketers strive to produce content viewers want to watch.”

Read More

Infographics

Are Teenagers Abandoning Facebook?

Are Teenagers Abandoning Facebook? [INFOGRAPHIC] | Social Media TodayTom Treanor We produced this infographic exploring the recent trends for teenagers related to Facebook and social media. We all hear anecdotally about the movement of teens to other (often mobile-centric) social media platforms. So what did we discover?

via Socialmediatoday

“85% of you [B2B] chose Twitter as your number one social platform.”

B2B Marketers Say Twitter is Now but Google+ Is the Future [Infographic]If all of the business to business marketers could come up to the front of the room please? Now, could you raise your hand if you think Twitter is the number one social platform for business? Hmm…wow, B2B Marketing is right. 85% of you chose Twitter as your number one social platform.

via Marketingpilgrim by Cynthia Boris

 

Winning the Battle Below the Fold

Posted by & filed under Opinion.

To anyone who will listen, I tell the story of a small company doing big things. To those who know the space, I say we’re more than a comments company. To those who are skeptical I point to the evidence: our product suite. It turns out more people are listening.

Two weeks ago I began my weekend early at a golf tournament benefiting the Emilio Nares Foundation. Our fans over at Gap Intelligence asked us if we’d sponsor a hole and join them. We said sure. I camped out on our hole and took pictures of the golfers as they came by. You can see the gallery here.

Not one to miss a chance at customer development, in addition to the photos I got a chance to tell our story. I’d tell them something like the following: “We power comments on newspaper web sites.” And then I’d ask everyone one by one if they had ever read a comment on an article or blog post. They all said yes. A few claimed they had never left comments, which I can believe. But some other info they volunteered surprised me. Nearly all of them said they will frequently skip reading the article in favor of reading comments. Being in the comments space, I didn’t find this astonishing so much as validating. I talk to publishers and media companies all day long. According to this post from Chartbeat it turns out the anecdotal evidence I was gathering on the golf course has some hard data behind it now.

Engagement below the fold

At times it feels like we’re building a religion. There’s so little data on commenting practices. What little data there is, publishers and their providers are reluctant to share them. Let’s change that.

I am on a crusade to convince publishers that they should believe in the power of social. Publishers also have the power to be social. That’s why we exist. The data supports it. The data supports the idea that the real action happens below the fold. In our world, that’s proof that God exists.

Don’t get me wrong – this is no slight to publishers. We have made it our crusade to help them because we share their values: they support communities, so it only makes sense that we should provide tools to allow communities to support them. In the coming weeks we’ll be showcasing some new product developments and new publisher partners who have entrusted us with designing, developing and managing that vision for them. Until now they had been the early faithful. Until then, on this Easter Sunday, we can say one day soon there will be new life in two industries we love: comments and news.

 

When should we automatically close comments?

Posted by & filed under Opinion.

I received a question from a community manager at a newspaper customer this week where he asked:

We are just having an internal discussion on why/if we need to auto close comments – any technical reason why we should do that? What, in your experience, is the best practice?

And here’s what I wrote in response:

As soon as the post goes live, s/he should camp out on the page for at least 30 minutes to field questions, respond to comments immediately (this greatly improves engagement and the quality of conversation at the same time).

The author should also respond to each social response (on Twitter or Facebook, for example) during that time period. There is a community tab which if you’re using will show those responses and link you to each item.
After about 120 minutes you will have on average half of all the comments that an article will ever receive (it’s 30 minutes on social media). Whenever the author feels like leaving the page, have him/her subscribe to receive email notifications at that point. Then each new response will go into his/her in-box where she can respond via email or click back to the page to camp out again.

As long as the author is subscribed for updates, there is no need to close the conversation.

The only rules of thumb that are golden are the following:

  • Never let a comment go un-noticed. Like it or reply to it. Or if it’s inappropriate, delete it. Every single one of them.
  • Reply immediately. The quicker you reply, the more rewarded the commenter feels and the greater sense of community will have in sharing your content more widely.