On Tuesday, Facebook announced their intention to step into the Social TV ring as a real contender to showcase their commitment to this growing space with a wealth of brand new media solutions.
In Facebook’s own words from this release:
“85% of people who reported visiting a social network while watching TV said they visited Facebook. Today we’re introducing a new set of tools and resources – and some improvements to existing products – to help broadcasters more deeply engage fans around the programming that matters most to them and the content they love to share with friends”
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Facebook has always come unstuck in the past with solutions for broadcasters due to the privacy lockdown of users’ profiles compared to the open nature of Twitter’s infrastructure, making it easier for the compliance and legal teams to be satisfied with Twitter should anything go wrong.
If any commitment is made to social interaction within the program, this is an absolute must. For example, changing the outcome of a show’s narrative using a social vote. The Brit Awards, MOBO Awards and The Voice U.S. are all shows that have used social voting with Twitter only—something which can now be supersized with Facebook with their new Hashtag Voting API.
This is an extremely exciting announcement, as it provides broadcasters the option to consider social interaction innovation that is not exclusive to one social network. Offering social engagement to a broad spectrum of their audiences is a key consideration, and consequently has been an adoption blocker in the past due to the integration limitations across more than one social network—the Facebook announcement changes this drastically.
Social TV strategy can now be considered much earlier in the idea conception process, so social interaction can form a core part of the show’s DNA, allowing for greater innovation with ‘socially charged’ original formats. Will we now see a new breed of executive roles being created internally as broadcasters attempt to capitalize further on the growing commitment of social networks in this space? I for one would relish seeing more vp/director of social TV hires in the coming months.
To cement the presence of this industry further, on the same day, during their #TwitterxTV keynote at MIPCOM, Twitter discussed in detail how they are committing further to the Social TV space with Twitter TV Timelines. Although this isn’t a new announcement, up until recently this has only been available for a select few TV shows. Twitter is now making this available to all show content owners. This gives them more control over how broadcasters curate and editorialize Twitter content around their shows, which they can personalize to maximize narrative and content reach within Twitter itself.
This move by Twitter cements the need for social networks to help ailing linear viewership figures, a topic I discussed in my article “Why Facebook Could Represent The Future Of TV.”
Viewership trends have already changed, whilst diversification of content consumption is inevitable from the plethora of OTT and On Demand options available to viewers. It’s imperative, given the amount of supplementary TV conversation and activity undertaken on these sites, for social networks to provide direct assistance to broadcasters to reinforce the importance and future of the first screen linear viewing experience both creatively and culturally.
A huge part of these social networks’ business is the broadcast & media sector. Given this commitment, the future is certainly laden with socially driven formats. Fantastic. As of August 2015 Facebook has 1.49 billion active monthly users compared to Twitter’s 316 million.
A full overview of all social networks total users can be found here.
Tom Bowers, the author of this post, is CEO of Connect Four Productions, specialists in broadcast viewer engagement.