One to Watch for 2012: The Social TV Convergence

There was a time, a long long time ago before the internet, The X Factor and Pringles existed, when the phase ‘water-cooler moment’ was coined. This was a moment of community and shared experience, where the tele-visual event of last night was watched by the majority so they could be involved in the conversation. Then, as time passed, the number of channels grew and digital recorders such as Sky Plus and online catch-up sites like 4oD and iPlayer evolved, and the relevance of the event diminished to a point where advertisers withdrew and ratings dropped.

Now, however, an online revolution is changing all that, it’s no longer the water cooler but the social media moment, and it happens live, as the programme is broadcast. Suddenly a two screen revolution is under-way as internet access and multi-platform applications such as Twitter and Facebook are used in unison with the television to analyse, discuss and ridicule the exploits of soap characters, reality ‘stars’ and world events. No longer does it take any great effort to access the social media platforms for the average viewer, of a certain demographic, has mobile phones, tablets and laptops at their sides while they watch TV. There are even services like Zeebox springing up that embrace this trend and give users a one stop social media stop.

This is a sign of the future where all forms of media channel (YouTube, ITVPlayer and Sky TV) are viewed within a web environment that is not confined to the window of that company. So what does this mean? Well, for the consumer it means more feedback which could lead to better programming but also more power to those who air their views. For the businesses involved, the broadcasters lose control over image but have more metrics by which to show value to advertisers and these advertisers will no doubt be the target of the social media platforms collecting opinions.

The Importance of Evolution in Social Media

Last week the news agenda was dominated by the announcements from Facebook’s F8 conference – changes for the social network were coming. True to the rumours, Facebook played along with the script and showcased a number of big changes to the site (here), all designed to give more functionality to the user.

These changes are aesthetic – more options with pictures and video, or functional like the integration of Spotify – the background to these changes is a little more crucial to the longevity of Facebook. The tech world doesn’t stand still and if you’re a brand or service that rests on your laurels then you’ll be left on the tech scrapheap a la MySpace (remember that?).

These changes are much more important to Facebook than just making it look pretty. It needed to deliver additional functionality in a space where content and engagement is critical. The launch of Google+ earlier this year shows that users are willing to try something different. While Google+ is an unknown quantity for the moment, as consumers and brands try to work out how to use its tools for the best benefit, the huge numbers of users flocking to the site (over 43 million users at the last count) must have been a worry to Facebook. Now that it’s a free to join, rather than invite-only, must concern Mr Zuckerberg furthermore.

Facebook’s answer is to evolve. It needs to provide users with what they currently want right now – a highly usable and function social media platform, but also deliver the features they will utilise and use increasing more in the future (integration of music, new apps etc). Twitter is also set to play a big part in the way the social media landscape will settle, but for the moment is watching on as the other two big guns slog it out. It’s going to be an interesting battle, where the ultimate winner is going to be the consumer as the platforms fight it out for their digital loyalty.

The London Riots and the ensuing blame game

2011 is proving to be the year of extreme news events that explode either without or seemingly without warning in rapid succession. Think of how the New Zealand earthquake was followed by the Arab Spring and then Japanese tsunami and nuclear leak. Most recently we’ve experienced Hackgate followed by the Riots.

One interesting common feature of all these stories has been how the media – and sometimes the PR industry – has become fixated on putting  the biggest tech brands at the heart of the story. So we have seen Twitter and other social media praised for helping coordinate the Arab Spring uprisings, but criticised for helping the country’s looters play cat and mouse with the police.   And opportunities to redeem the same social media have arisen as Twitter, Facebook et al are praised for helping to coordinate community clean-ups by the Riot Wombles. But then might those same Riot Wombles turn into tomorrow’s Twitter vigilantes? And so the news and PR agenda swings the other way.

Actually, the role of mobile technology and social media in recent events is less interesting than we realise. I liked what a London Evening Standard columnist said recently about how blaming mobile phones and Twitter for the London 2011 riots is as ridiculous as blaming the Brixton 1980s riots on the push button telephone. Similarly, social media supported the Arab uprisings but the reasons for its’ momentum and success have very little to do with Twitter or Facebook when you consider the importance of protesters’ personal bravery or the unwillingness of some state organisations to hold back from doing their governments’ dirty work.

Quite obviously such technology is useful for criminality and rioting – as is it for more usual law abiding uses – but it does not give us much insight into why these events occurred. It is lazy politics and journalism to heap much significance on how restricting social media will stop riots recurring.

Social networks? Watch out for friends’ posts while you are searching for information online

Last week Google announced that it was planning to implement changes to its Google Social Search platform to include posts from people’s online friends into its standard search results. The social search results, which previously appeared at the bottom of the page, will now be mixed throughout the list of results based on their relevance. Another interesting change in the search engine functionality is that users will be prompted to connect their social networking accounts any time Google’s algorithms find a public account that might belong to the same user.

As social networking profiles become more interconnected, people will be able to see publicly shared links posted by online ‘friends’ and connect their Twitter, YouTube, Flickr or Quora accounts. However, the upgraded social search engine will not include posts from the social networking giant Facebook. This does not come as a surprise as the two companies have a long history of trying to ‘steal’ each other’s market share with Google tapping into social media and Facebook developing its own email platform.

Despite excluding Facebook, Google’s Social Search platform will offer access to much more information about users than it was previously available. Some people will question whether this is entirely a good idea. Google seems sensitive to the privacy issues and allows users to opt out of the social sharing service by not connecting their online accounts to the search platform. However, if any of your online friends is ‘connected’ and shares or retweets your posts, they will become publicly available in the search results. Moreover, it remains uncertain how you would be able to control who sees to your online posts once you have connected your social networking profiles to Google.

Overall these changes highlight a number of trends which will potentially impact social media PR and marketing. As social networks are increasingly woven into online search engines and online profiles can be easily linked, businesses will be able to reach wider audiences and niche customer segments. SEO practices will be adjusted to take into account the rising importance of social networks for placing content in the top ranking of people’s search results. This will result in more intricate and subtle integration of social media tools into PR and marketing campaigns and will place higher importance on online networks.

Multitasking UK: What will advertisers do next?

The UK has been named a nation of ‘multitaskers’ thanks to social networks and increasingly sophisticated mobile phones, according to new research from Ofcom.

The research reveals that a fifth of all media is consumed at the same time as another form of communication with people spending almost half of their waking hours glued to a screen, on the phone to friends or listening to the radio.

Although TV is as popular as ever, almost one-fifth of the time spent watching TV is now accompanied by laptop or mobile activity. A finding supported by YouGov this week which found that that more than half of UK respondents (58%) are regularly consuming at least one other type of media while watching television.

With television being seen as one of the staples of the advertising industry it will be interesting to see how they react and engage with their target markets moving forward. Brands could sponsor online elements of shows that incorporate your social network, for example real-time quizzes and voting amongst friends. Alternatively, e-commerce professionals as it could offer the unique opportunity to directly link products shown on TV to internet retailers.

Whatever the next generation of advertising will look like we know that the picture below will no longer represent the typical television viewers today.