Posted by @robinsloan on Thursday March 3rd, 2011∞
On Monday night, the Travel Channel demonstrated an on-air Twitter integration that was simple but powerful—a new template for any TV show. Here’s how it worked.
Seven times during the season premiere of No Reservations, the Travel Channel told its viewers that host Anthony Bourdain was live-tweeting the show:
When you found it on Twitter, Bourdain’s commentary track was funny, insightful, and profane—in other words, a perfect extension of the show. It featured Tweets like this…
For a supposed ‘lefty’, Penn is very close to and appreciative of the military. It’s a weird alliance. But cool to see.less than a minute ago via CoTweetAnthony Bourdain NoReservations
The “Sean” in that Tweet is Sean Penn, who appeared in Monday’s episode, shot in Haiti:
Thanks to Bourdain’s Tweets, we also heard about Penn’s work ethic and his rum punch.
In the first Tweet up above, Bourdain says “maybe a DVD extra,” but of course that’s exactly what these are: bite-sized DVD extras, presented in real-time, that you can not only read but also reply to. Now, the commentary track is a conversation.
All told, this is a small investment—an hour of focused tweeting and a graphics package. But the payoff looks something like this:
Posted by @robinsloan on Monday February 28th, 2011∞
The 83rd Annual Academy Awards captured the country’s attention on Sunday night, but ABC’s cameras didn’t provide the only view. This year’s show was a new kind of 360-degree event, with:
a camera-snapping, live-tweeting host;
an official hashtag on air; and
a big, sustained second-screen conversation on Twitter.
First: whatever you thought of his hosting, there’s no question that James Franco broke new ground with his tweeting. In the opening moments of the show, this…
And all together, that represents a brand-new kind of event experience: one where viewers get to experience it from every vantage point, even from the stage itself. And the experience went both ways, because Franco got to hear what viewers were saying, too; his account was mentioned 63,737 times during the show.
Posted by @robinsloan on Wednesday February 9th, 2011∞
This might be the most useful graph you see all week:
I mean, the implications are obvious… right?
Just kidding. Bear with me and I’ll explain: The graph above is from a new paper (PDF) from Cornell’s computer science department. It’s based on an analysis of the top 500 hashtags found in billions of Tweets gathered about a year ago.
The vertical axis (P) is a fraction of Twitter users tweeting with a particular hashtag. The horizontal axis (K) is the number of times they had seen that hashtag before tweeting with it. So basically, the graph is telling us: You need to see a hashtag four or five times before it really clicks.
But what’s interesting is that the graph doesn’t go up forever; your likelihood to use a hashtag doesn’t simply increase with every exposure, as if you’re being bludgeoned into participation: “Okay okay, fine! I’ll make up one of those #LessAmbitiousMovies already!”
Posted by @robinsloan on Monday February 7th, 2011∞
One of the most basic strategies for effective live TV tweeting is the commentary track—basically, Pop-Up Video, except the bubbles are on Twitter instead of the TV screen.
It turns out the bubbles can be almost anything: real-time quips from talent, e.g. Daniel Tosh tweeting during Tosh.0; fun facts from experts, e.g. biologists tweeting during LIFE; or layers of information that allow you to take action on whatever you’re seeing on screen.
That’s what @amazonmp3 provided during the Super Bowl, tweeting titles of tracks as they aired:
How cool is that? It turns classic web search on its head by pre-emptively answering viewers’ questions. I think songs in Super Bowl commercials are just the start; this is a technique that can be bent towards plenty of other purposes. Food, fashion, technology: anything you see on TV can get an explanation, a link, a cue to take action. So yes, it’s finally Jennifer Aniston’s sweater—and it’s made possible by Tweets. (Ahem: note the date on that post.)
Posted by @robinsloan on Monday February 7th, 2011∞
As Egypt turns upside down, Al Jazeera has found its moment. It’s the right network in the right place at the right time; the Qatar-based news organization has unique access and a unique audience. From the Middle East to the White House, all eyes are on Al Jazeera.
And it turns out a lot of those eyes are coming from Twitter.
First: it’s important to understand that Al Jazeera’s English-language channel is only carried in three cities in the U.S. So put yourself in Al Jazeera English’s shoes: you’re covering the biggest story in your history, and you’ve got the goods—live video from downtown Cairo, from Tahrir Square itself. How do you get this coverage in front on the right audience at the right time?
You use Twitter.
Specifically, you use Promoted Tweets to transform Twitter into a new kind of TV platform. As a refresher: Promoted Tweets are actual Tweets that an advertiser pays to lock into position at the top of search results. They can be replied to and retweeted just like any other Tweet.
Posted by @robinsloan on Tuesday February 1st, 2011∞
If you’ve been following the news from Egypt on TV, chances are good you’ve seen some Tweets on air. If you haven’t, here’s a quick sampling of segments to give you a sense of how Twitter is being used to tell the story.
First, Diane Sawyer opens Monday night’s ABC World News set up in a remarkable tableau—half map of the Middle East, half TweetDeck:
Next, on CNN, Piers Morgan talks to Sarah Sirgany, a writer for Daily News Egypt who turned to reporting via Twitter when her paper’s website was shut down:
And on Meet the Press, foreign policy expert Martin Indyk tells David Gregory: “You are witnessing here a twenty-first century revolution”—and he uses TweetDeck to illustrate the point:
This is a show that struggled on the CW for three seasons before being cancelled. It spent more than a year in limbo, its fans clamoring for a comeback. When it returned for a fourth season… it was on a different network. But finally, when it premiered on BET in January, it scored 7.7 million viewers—making it the second-most-watched show ever on BET and one of the most-watched scripted series premieres on cable, ever.
So I thought I’d add a little data to the mix. It’s one thing to talk about Twitter traction generally and another thing to actually run the numbers. What did the Tweets look like on the night of Tuesday, January 11, when The Game premiered? Well, something like this:
What do I take away from this video? First: the Late Night crew is tons of fun. Second: it’s creativity, not technology, that makes this stuff work. Finally: I’m totally following Smug Dingus.
Posted by @robinsloan on Friday January 28th, 2011∞
One of the things we want to do more of here at Twitter Media is to understand and quantify the basics: What happens when you talk about Twitter on TV? What’s the impact of putting a hashtag up on screen or mentioning your Twitter account during a show?
This is just one data point, but it’s a fun one. On Thursday night, Piers Morgan made a direct plea for new followers with the help of his guests Kim and Kourtney Kardashian:
Posted by @robinsloan on Wednesday January 26th, 2011∞
So you could watch the State of the Union on C-SPAN, of course. But on C-SPAN2, you could watch the State of the Union augmented with live Tweets from Members of Congress:
Simple but effective! What you’re looking at is just a web widget plopped into the broadcast feed with a scan converter. Props to C-SPAN2 for putting this together.
Anthony Bourdain
