Facebook’s push into social TV continues to grow, improve and impact the industry. Here’s a roundup of the company’s latest moves.
APIs to allow for seamless broadcast integrations: After recently rolling out hashtags, embedded posts, and trending topics, Facebook has selected a handful of news organizations – BuzzFeed, CNN, NBC’s Today Show, BSkyB, and Slate – to allow them to begin integrating Facebook conversations into their broadcasts or coverage by displaying public posts of real-time activity about any given topic.
According to Facebook:
Partners can also use these tools to show the number of Facebook posts that mention a specific word over a period of time, including a demographic breakdown for the people talking about that topic. For instance, now every week during the ‘What’s Trending’ segment of The Today Show, NBC can easily include how many people on Facebook talked about a popular subject, where it’s getting the most buzz, whether it’s most popular among males or females, and with which age groups.
A strategic alliance with Mass Relevance: Last month, we wrote about how ABC and the CMA Awards used Mass Relevance for an innovative on-air Instagram integration. Now, Facebook has formalized the partnership with the social experience company, and Mass Relevance will be the first and only company with full access to both Facebook’s Keyword Insights API and Public Feed API. Mass Relevance works with the top four most social TV shows – X Factor, Glee, American Idol, The Voice – and most recently worked with MTV to debut Instagram voting related to the 2013 Video Music Awards.
Benefitting from a strong NFL season opener: There were over 20 million Facebook interactions (posts, comments, and likes) by over 8 million people related to the Broncos-Ravens season opener last Thursday night.
The most social moments from the game:
- Peyton Manning throws his record-tying 7th touchdown pass late in the 4th quarter to seal the 49-27 victory.
- Severe lightning and rain delay the start of the game by 33 minutes.
- Playing in his first NFL game, backup tight end and former basketball star Julius Thomas catches his 2nd touchdown during the second quarter to help tie the game at 14-14.
- Wes Welker catches his 2nd touchdown of the third quarter (and game) to give the Broncos a 35-17 lead.
- The Ravens take a 14-7 lead on Ray Rice’s 1-yard TD run midway through the second
Here’s infographic about how Facebook has thus far played a role in the biggest broadcast TV events.
