Twitter spikes demonstrate links between TV and social media

After a year of sport which saw the Olympics come to the UK, a Brit win a tennis major,  Chelsea win the European Champions League and a Briton claim cycling’s Yellow Jersey Twitter has revealed that seven of the top ten trending stories in 2012 were related to sport.

As the nation was glued to their screens by a compelling year of sport, 2012 also became the year when viewers truly interacted with the content they were witnessing. At one point, fans were tweeting so much while watching a sports event it even impacted the coverage carried by the BBC.

For the connected TV market, 2012 has shown the potential for companion device applications. It’s something we’ve believed in for a long time, and that we’ve continued to develop in our own product range by adding new features such as Twitter integration to ANT Galio Move. New viewing behaviour is driving the development of new TV applications that will enhance the overall experience, which can only be good news for consumers.

Moving the EPG to the companion device, a natural evolution

One new development that was commonplace at IBC this year is the use of companion devices such as an iPad or smartphone for navigating the EPG. Over the last year there have been lots of demos of these services, but now it’s becoming a commercial reality. ANT Galio Move, the companion device offering from ANT, is available to consumers today under the View21 brand in the UK and recently won an award at the ConnectedWorld.tv awards for its approach to using a second screen.

This isn’t just a “we won an award” blog entry, though.  What I really want to talk about is how this kind of app has changed my use of the EPG.  

Moving the EPG off the main screen on to a second screen does more than just give me a better way of navigating around a grid-based guide. It changes how the guide gets used as a browsing tool and a content discovery mechanism, and affects the whole dynamic of watching TV. Many tablet owners are already used to multi-tasking while watching TV, and having the EPG on a companion device means that browsing the guide simply becomes another part of that multi-tasking.  Most importantly, it means that it’s not interrupting other people’s TV viewing.

Having the guide on a companion device, with its own connection to the Internet and a richer interaction model also opens up new possibilities for what the guide looks like.  Imagine “zooming in” on a programme to find out more about it, as if the detailed information about the programme is just another part of the main guide grid.  Imagine having that tied in to a recommendation engine, or personal recommendations from friends via Twitter that suggest programmes you’d like.  Imagine having it integrated with catch-up TV services, or VoD services, or the iTunes store so that you can buy the movie or TV series to keep.

With the rich metadata that is now available, the combination of advanced TV services and a companion device with an easy-to-use user interface means that are we now in a position to make the best use of that new data to improve our EPG and help us to more easily find what we want to watch.

It’s Official: Sport is Social

The British public is embracing second screening as part of their everyday viewing habits. According to Sky, 75% of people now watch TV with a second connected device in hand. During the Olympics, over 150 million tweets were posted, making it one of the most talked-about events ever on Twitter. It confirms that big sporting events trail only breaking national news for stimulating social networking.

Now, social networking sites are not only being used to discuss programming, but to choose what to watch too. 24% of 18 to 24 year-olds use Facebook and 9% use Twitter to find something to watch on TV. Remarkably, over one in ten of us are now turning on TVs because of what we’ve seen on social media.

According to Broadband TV News, BBC’s iPlayer received a record 196 million views over the Olympics, with almost a fifth coming from mobile and tablet devices. This, along with the Ryder Cup, has given sport 30% of the online viewing market.

Sport is reacting to this too. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the world’s fastest growing sport, and this could well be down to social media and second screening. For example, Head of UFC’s parent company, Dana White, has over 2.2 million followers, and before the main fight, on pay-per-view, supporting events are shown live on Facebook. Sport has always engendered debate, something which second screening and social media can only help to grow. In the weird and wacky world of professional wrestling, WWE recently acquired social networking site Tout, and now regularly uses content from Tout in its broadcast programming.

All of this means sports fans and content providers are using multiple platforms to source, consume, and enjoy more entertainment at once. In this regard, sports content is ahead of the market, but it will surely only be a matter of time before other content providers start to integrate further in this way.