A few years ago I signed up to attend the Social TV NYC Meetup. It was right around the time that Social TV was really taking off. Twitter and Facebook were blowing up. Tunerfish, GetGlue and Miso were all jumping into the second screen check-in space. Every broadcast and cable marketer saw the opportunity to boost conversation and hopefully ratings. It was an exciting time to be a TV marketer.
The first gathering I attended was terrific, with everything that you want in a meetup. Great presentations. Great people. And snacks! I eagerly signed up for the next one only to show up and be greeted by a sign on the door that the meetup was cancelled. After that I never heard another word until I got an email last June saying the group would be shut down without an organizer.
Damn, I liked that meetup. So I reached out to the one person I know who knows everyone in the social TV universe, Natan Edelsburg of Lost Remote and Sawhorse Media, and said, “Let’s do this.”
Within a couple of weeks we had our first meetup. About 25 people showed up at Sawhorse early on a Thursday morning in July to talk social TV and eat bagels. It was great and Natan and I knew we had stumbled on something special. Nobody shows up at 8am in New York unless they are passionate about a topic and want to connect with others just as enthusiastic.
In August we invited our first guest speaker, Don Steele from Comedy Central. Kelle Rozell from truTV joined us in September, followed by Ryan Osborn of NBC News in October. David Beck from Univision took the hot seat in November and JP Lespinasse from BET finished off 2013.
What was remarkable about all these guests is how candid and insightful they were on the challenges, strategies, tactics and rewards of handling social for a broadcast or cable network. The informal structure of the group allows for a free flowing conversation that has everyone involved and fully engaged.
Social TV has come a long way in a few short years and 2014 will be even bigger. Just this week GetGlue relaunched as tvtag, Yahoo put IntoNow out to pasture and Viggle acquired Dijit. Hold on folks, this year will be interesting.
I posed a few questions to some of our past guests about what mattered in 2013 and what’s ahead for 2014.
1. What was the most important advancement in Social TV for 2013?
RYAN OSBORN (NBC News) To me, 2013 was the year that video producers moved beyond the shiny new toys of platforms and realized that at the core of any “social TV” strategy is good content. No one cares about a hashtag or a GIF if the story and media in its original form is not compelling.
KELLE ROZELL (truTV) Tough question. The Nielsen causal report linking Twitter to driving ratings and ultimately creating a Nielsen Twitter TV Rating. Hopefully these numbers will help with monetization in the near future.
JP LESPINASSE (BET Networks) SEEiT – ability to discover shows/tweets on digital, then take an action that directly affects your TV screen is transformative for #socialtv.
2. What is the biggest challenge when it comes to your brand and Social TV?
RYAN Particularly in news, our brands are built on trust and a promise to our users that we take very seriously. Any social experience that we create meets a very high editorial standard that we are committed to upholding across platforms.
KELLE Getting company-wide support. Education on the value of social is key, but not everyone understands it. Building an infrastructure even down to the Network Operations level has also been a challenge, but all parties are on board to breakdown the firewalls for 2014.
JP Data. Sifting through it, making sense of it, making actionable plans based on it and resourcing. How do you staff social? Where does it live in the firm? How best to ensure it permeates the organization.
3. What do you predict will be a Social TV game changer in 2014?
RYAN The biggest game changer is going to come from TV producers that experiment, but most importantly have the patience to play the long game in a very complex ecosystem. So many producers announce “social TV” products built by outside vendors that don’t scale and are gone by the time you’ve finished reading the press release. I’m most excited when I talk to innovators like the CTO of Zeebox, Anthony Rose, who has a vision for a real platform that aims to become a utility or when I see Comcast’s vision for an initiative like SEEiT. I think those are the initiatives to watch.
KELLE Can I get back to you on this?
JP 2014 – Not sure. I know this though, 14 is mobile’s year to shine and with the vast majority of social happening there – outputs of this shift will impact #socialtv in a meaningful way. Your mobile will be your default credit card, your remote control and has already become the primary recommendation engine. Someone will make a mobile sumthin’ – and it will have HUGE social TV. implications. I’m just not sure what it’ll be…yet.
Tomorrow, we kick off 2014 with Jenny McCoy from IFC. It starts early, but the bagels are fresh and the coffee is hot. Join us!
worldonshuffle 