Publications Social TV Grows 91% From a Year Ago; Animated Shows like American Dad Hot on Facebook 03/19 February was a big month for social TV chatter, driven by events like the Oscars, the Super Bowl and the Grammys. In addition, the amount of conversations and check-ins around TV shows has grown 91% year over year, said social TV tracking service Trendrr.tv in a recently released white paper. The last year has seen a slew of programmers from Discovery to Showtime release new and additional social TV apps to promote synchronous viewing, some of which include online video. Plus, there’s been ample attention by media agencies to startups that can track and quantify social buzz around shows and commercials. Interestingly, audiences for different shows “buzz” about them in various ways, Trendrr.tv found. Trendrr.tv’s analysis of social engagement includes tweets and posts as well as shared links for video clips. Sunday is the most popular day for social chatter and that’s because so many tentpole events air on Sundays.
Revealed: How Anthony Rose Plans To Revolutionise TV | paidContent:UK I have seen the future of TV and it is called “Zeebox”. The next project from Anthony Rose, the technologist who built KaZaA and BBC iPlayer in to some of the most disruptive digital media plays, is due to go live in October. Topped by Peoplesound founder and ex EMI SVP Ernesto Schmitt as CEO, the pair’s startup raised $5 million in seed funds from unidentified investors in June and has been operating in stealth as “tBone”. But it has been renamed and has just located at offices at London’s Covent Garden, where it has a staff of almost 30 (including former iPlayer engineers) and where the pair showed me an exclusive demo… What is Zeebox? Attempting to ride both the multi-screen TV engagement trend and the increasing adoption of internet TVs, Zeebox is a real-time system for social TV viewing and for engaging deeply around those shows that depends on recognising sofa-based second screens as the place for innovation. Viewing together One of the intended uses of “infotags” is commerce.
Samsung unveils smart TV teaser video WATCH VIDEO. Samsung Electronics has released a video teasing the launch of its newest smart TV to be revealed at the 2013 International CES in Las Vegas. The CES is the largest consumer electronics show in North America, to be held from January 8-11. Major smart TV announcements are expected from CE manufacturers including Samsung and LG. Around Christmas there were some rumours in the US blogosphere that Intel would also announce the upcoming launch of its own set-top box for smart Tv services, but these reports were later retracted. The Intel story replaced the usual guessing game whether Apple would finally announce its Apple TV. Meanwhile, Samsung is trying to steal the hype with its teaser video. The TVs are gathering around a large venue which reminds of CES and the TVs are staring in the same direction. Last year, Samsung also released a CES teaser video, which received the Platinum Marcom Award in November.
SocialGuide debuts new TV analytics and engagement tool It’s a shoot-out in the social TV analytics space these days, with SocialGuide, Trendrr, Bluefin Labs and Networked Insights among those companies battling it out across networks, brands and agencies. SocialGuide has launched a new product called SocialGuide Intelligence (SGI), which it bills as the only social TV analytics and audience engagement platform in the marketplace. Beyond offering social TV reports and ratings for different TV shows and channels, it enables clients to “identify and engage with its social influencers and key comments” from directly within the tool. “We spent a lot of time meeting with networks and listening to them about how they value their social audience,” founder Sean Casey told us in an email interview. Part of a network report for NBC for Sunday, March 18th More from the NBC network report, which shows a competitive analysis, most retweeted tweets about NBC programming for the day and the most social audience by most followers and most comments.
iOS App Viggle Will Pay You to Watch TV | Product News A new app for iOS pays you to watch television. Viggle, released Wednesday on the App Store, is one of the first “loyalty programs,” as the company calls it, for TV. Viggle works by using an iOS device’s microphone to hear what you’re watching, including both live and DVR-recorded shows. While only watching TV will take quite a while to achieve the 7,500 point threshold — it takes roughly 60 hours of continuous viewership to reach it — there are a multitude of other opportunities in which a user can receive “bonus” points. As a bonus, once Viggle has determined what show the user is watching, it provides access to Twitter reactions to the show and the opportunity for users to comment directly to Twitter or Facebook. The company and its advertising partners hope that by providing extra incentive for users to view particular shows that advertising revenue will increase and more direct-marketing opportunities will open up. For now, Viggle is available for free from the App Store.
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Matcha launches on the iPad to help TV show discovery One of the biggest challenges in TV today is finding the content you want to watch. With the addition of Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon to the already 500-channel universe — and your DVR — discovery is most difficult than ever. Not to mention, content appears in different windows on different platforms. Last year we wrote about Matcha.tv, a TV discovery site that enables users to discover content across Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon and Xfinity. Social media is bringing some viewers back to live TV, but the overwhelming trend is in the direction of on-demand playback. Over on Netflix, iTunes and Amazon Prime, TV shows come in seasonal waves. “The explosion of the streaming video industry – along with the increased popularity of tablet devices – has dramatically changed how users are finding and watching movies and TV shows, and the idea of a single programming guide must be re-imagined,” said Guy Piekarz, Matcha.tv co-founder and CEO.
Social TV startup Zeebox scores over $15 million from BSkyB We’re only in week two of 2012 and another social TV startup has just received a huge amount of investment from a major media company. Zeebox, yet to launch in the US, received over $15 million from News Corp controlled BSkyB, the largest pay-TV broadcaster in the UK with over 10 million customers. As Paid Content points out, “The funding means Zeebox has a triple-digit million valuation after just two months of live operation, and without yet having executed a monetization strategy.” Zeebox claims to have attracted 250,000 users so far — a user base that Miso CEO Somrat Niyogi also stated when the company recently launched SideShows in New York. Zeebox CTO and Co-Founder Anthony Rose confirmed with us that, “it will accelerate our international rollout,” but alse added that he “can’t say anything beyond that.” Finally, we wanted to know if there would be any more announcements this week with CES upon us.
Data Points: Social Commentary Chances are if you're an avid TV viewer, you've tweeted about a show at some point. SocialGuide Intelligence, one of a growing number of companies tracking social response to TV content, examined tweets related to 213 channels over a two-day period to see where the action was. Looking at shows by genre, reality TV was the most active, receiving 19 percent of all comments. Series were the most-tweeted program type, receiving more than half the comments, which is in keeping with the volume of programs they represent. But no one tops sports fans for tweeting activity: Sports events accounted for 37 percent of comments, despite representing just 3 percent of program volume. Infographic: Carlos Monteiro