In the past few months, I’ve posted several blogs that contain lists and graphs of the biggest and most important players in the Social TV sphere. A notable exception in all these lists has been Facebook, which has been surprisingly quiet so far. Aside from touting “frictionless sharing” on platforms such as Hulu and the desire to bring the “stickiness” of Facebook to TV watching, Facebook has remained on the sidelines.

However, in a recent article in Lost Remote, Kay Madati, head of Entertainment Strategy at Facebook says that the company has been talking with content developers and spending “a lot of time with television networks, movie studios and producers in Hollywood.” Talking is good, but this market is evolving fast.

It is odd that Facebook, which has shown that it can move fast in other domains, has yet to position itself as a key player in an ecosystem that evolved from the social networking trend started by the company itself.

What do you think?

Funny how the Social TV space attracts all types of investors – from movie stars (Ashton Kutcher) and sports celebrities (Marc Cuban) to Silicon Valley smart money (Kleiner Perkins) and the expected media giants.

After having reviewed VC funding in a previous post, below is my take on the most interesting Social TV activity by big media players – from TV networks and Hollywood studios to cable companies.

Twitter and Google are also included in this review. They are not media companies per se, yet their business has a big impact on the media world.

Comcast

• Developed second screen app Tunerfish
• According to patents filings, Comcast is developing technology that would allow them to notify subscribers when their friends begin watching a particular TV show or movie, and reward customers with discounts on their cable bills when a program they recommend is viewed by another subscriber

DirectTV

• Partnership with Social TV platform Miso

BSkyB (UK)

• Investment in zeebox

Oxygen

• Will utilize ACTV8.me to power a second screen app for The Glee Project, Season 2
• Developed its own Social TV platform, Oxygen Connect

HBO

• Developed HBO Connect as a lab for Social TV

Time Warner

• Investments in GetGlue and Bluefin Labs
• Its subsidiary Turner Broadcasting recently launched Media Camp, an 12-week accelerator in San Francisco for early-stage media startups

Bravo

• Re-launching BravoTV.com over the next year as a social TV platform

VH1

• Recently launched a smartphone app, called Co-Star, as a companion to VH1 programming

FOX

• Investments in ConnecTV and ACTV8.me
• FX: Integrating Twitter, Facebook and GetGlue into its various web offerings, especially for shows such as Archer with strong social followings

USA

• Working with Miso for mobile apps on iPhone and iPod touch

MTV

• Implementing Verizon Wireless-sponsored Twitter Tracker into some live shows

CBS

• Acquired Clicker
• CBS.com launched CBS Connect, a web site to aggregate content from Twitter and Facebook across all of CBS’ programming and connect fans and stars

CBS/ABC/NBC/CW/MyNetworkTV

• Investment in ConnecTV

Telemundo

• Partnership with Social TV analytics company Trendrr.tv and automatic content recognition (ACR) company Shazam for the April 2012 Billboard Latin Music Awards

Univision

• Partnership with SocialGuide, to integrate a Spanish-language version of its social TV content guide

Twitter

• Acquired Hotspots.io, which focuses on Social TV analytics
• Partnership with Crimson Hexagon, to produce tweet data for audience analysis
• Working with several live TV “competition” shows (like The X Factor) to create voting features that enable the audience to communicate directly with the show
• More details on Twitter and Social TV on my recent blog: Social TV: 7 Things that Twitter is Doing Right

Google

• Investment in Miso

We’re flooded with news in the Social TV space – but most of it is noise. Separating the wheat from the chaff, here is my selection of interesting news from the week of April 30, 2012, and why:

Gary Lauder and Mark Cuban Invest in Flingo

Both angels have a track record of smart investments. Interesting validation of Flingo’s technology and business model, on the heels of recent $7M funding by VC firm August Capital investment (as reported in my blog, Who’s Funding Who?)

http://www.fiercecable.com/story/lauder-cuban-invest-social-tv-startup-flingo/2012-05-02#ixzz1toNQMnNH
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/05/02/the-daily-start-up-mark-cuban-backs-social-tv-start-up-flingo/?mod=google_news_blog

Oxygen Channel Launches Oxygen Connect, a New Social TV Platform

Oxygen is taking Social TV into its own hands, driving viewers to engage on the network’s own second screen app, Oxygen Connect (launching May 18), rather than competing with other programming on apps such as GetGlue and Miso.

http://mashable.com/2012/05/01/oxygen-connect-glee-project/

TVplus Integrates ACR Technology into its SDK

Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) is the key to delivering social experiences around TV and monetizing them because it automatically recognizes and tracks what viewers are watching. There are various flavors of ACR, developed by various companies (see my previous post on the Social TV Ecosystem). Most second screen apps now integrate some type of ACR, the one integrated by TVplus comes from Audible Magic.

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/press-releases/article/TVplus-Adds-Audible-Magic-ACR-Technology-to-3531269.php

We will keep updating our list as more funding news is released. Do keep suggestions and comments coming.

NOTE: This chart has been updated. Please click here to see the updated chart.

The intersection between “social” and TV is indeed gathering momentum. According to BlueFin Labs data, the number of social comments around the Super Bowl exploded from a mere 1.8 million in 2011, to over 12 million in 2012. This is just one example of an exponential growth, indicating that consumer TV-viewing habits are changing fast.

Whether Social TV will actually reach the $12 billion mark that Jack Myers predicts, there’s no question that there exists many monetization opportunities in the merging of social interaction and TV shows. This fact has sent venture capitalists, cable companies, and TV networks digging into their pockets to fund their application of choice. I expect that the other side of the Social TV equation – that is, social networks like Twitter or Facebook – will be making similar strategic moves in the near future.

What seemed to be a few Social TV startups offering “second screen apps” just a year ago, has grown into quite a complex group of businesses all addressing various aspects of the Social TV pie. The infographic below is my first attempt at clarifying the Social TV Ecosystem by categorizing the various players. I view this list as a starting point for discussion – comments, additions, suggestions for revisions, disagreements – all are welcome.

Want to find out more about the companies above? Here are links to their individual websites:

Audible Magic                     
BlueFin Labs                           
BuddyTV                           
ConnecTV                            
Dijit                                          
Fav.tv                                      
Flingo                                      
Get Glue                                  
Gracenote 
Into Now (owned by Yahoo)  
Miso                                         
NetBase                                   
NM Incite                                 
Peel                                         
Screen Tribe                           
Shazam                                   
Social Guide                           
Social Report                          
Trendrr                                     
Tunerfish                                 
TV Dinner                                
TVfriend                                  
TVPlus                                     
TVTak                                      
Twenty Feet                            
Umami                                     
Viggle                                     
WiOffers                                   
yap.TV 
zeebox (UK)  

One more indication that the world of TV is in massive reset mode: the all-powerful Nielsen ratings are being flushed out as the standard by which all TV audiences are measured. New modes of measuring are taking TV data crunching and analysis to new heights and scale, soon leaving Nielsen ratings in the dust.

We are at an inflection point in TV history, where the mass-market medium that has been reaching into American households for decades (the TV) is now intersecting with the newer mass communication phenomenon of social networks. And this intersection is an explosive combination that will redefine the world of television, as we know it.

Case in point: the traditional way by which the popularity of TV shows have been measured since the inception of TV – the infamous Nielsen rating system – is becoming a thing of the past. It’s ironic – Nielsen rankings have killed (or made) so many careers in the TV industry and now it’s their turn to be in the ICU with a low prognosis of survival.

What’s happening is that Nielsen is being pushed over the cliff by young up-and-comers who provide analytics about social buzz – something that is becoming a lot more relevant than the small sample of households that Nielsen monitors (for a good overview of how Nielson monitors “TV households” in the US, click here). The potential to track the likes and dislikes of millions of viewers is now much higher with the newer “second screens” apps and social network analytics technologies that are now on the market.

Facebook and Twitter alone reach 800 million and 100 million users, respectively. The fact that an ever-growing subset of these Facebook and Twitter fans now use the social platforms to engage around TV shows points to a huge potential for monitoring the popularity of these shows. Technologies to analyze the TV-related chatter on social networks are already being leveraged by dozens of “second screen” app providers (a good summary of the leading ones is here) and social analytics companies (like BlueFin Labs, Netbase, Trendrr, etc.)

These companies can reach the kind of scale that could not achieved by the Nielsen method of monitoring a small sample of households and they can also they can crunch BIG data in REAL TIME.

What’s particularly fascinating to me (I am a data analytics addict given my background as a Gartner analyst) is that I have seen this happen before. I call it the “wisdom of the crowd” applied to Big Data.

That’s how Gartner Group, the leading research company in IT, got created a few decades ago. Its founder, Gideon Gartner, got the idea by observing how Wall Street financial experts issued “ratings” on stocks of IT companies like IBM, Microsoft etc. Like Nielsen in the TV world, “Buy, Sell and Hold” stock ratings by Wall Street analysts from leading firms like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs could make or break stocks. What Gideon cleverly figured out was that the people issuing these ratings were financials experts who did not necessarily understand the brave new world of IT and thus based their analysis on a limited view of a company’s health: they only looked at the balance sheet. It was certainly a good indicator but not the whole story – just like Nielsen only monitoring 25,000 households without taking into account all the types of screens that are now been used to watch TV (see Wikipedia).

Gideon had the vision to go ask the people who actually used the IT products created by the IT companies rated by Wall Street analysts, whether they liked these products and thus would keep buying them. By talking to Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) of large banks, retail chains etc., Gartner analysts gathered data on how the actual users of IT products sold by IBM, Microsoft and others rated these products, thereby learning whether they would keep buying them (if they liked them) or switch to another product from another vendor (if they didn’t like them).

Thus, based on the data gathered from the actual users of IT, Gartner was able to predict (and influence) the market success of IT products and provide a new type of ratings about IT product vendors, above and beyond Wall Street’s financial-based ratings.

History is now repeating itself in the world of data analytics. Different industry (TV versus IT) but same model: the Bluefin’s and Trendrr’s of this world are now doing to Nielsen what Gartner did to Wall Street firms in the early 80′s: tapping the crowds of TV viewers to gather and crunch data about TV products versus relying on the limited views of a select few. That’s game changing, folks – it’s way up there in the category of “paradigm shift.”

We can only start to imagine the possibilities unleashed by the ability to analyze and define consumer profiles from the massive data streams produced by millions of TV viewers every data “on the fly”. It’s like being able to channel a tsunami (the exploding waves of data) into well-managed rivers of data streams that will then feed the fields of advertising and content creation with relevant data to better target audiences with better ads and better content.

The dawn of a new TV era…

Articles referenced in this post are:

http://splitsider.com/2011/01/why-nielsen-ratings-are-inaccurate-and-why-theyll-stay-that-way

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679561/the-race-for-the-second-screen-5-apps-that-are-shaping-social-tv)

How Twitter is Surfing the Social TV Wave

Social TV has finally reached the stage where it’s no longer on the fringe of the conversation and Twitter has taken a key role in integrating Social Media and TV. While Facebook is still testing timelines, tickers, music integration, etc., Twitter has set its sights clearly on TV and is leading the way by partnering with other technology companies, sharing data, and working with content producers.

I am impressed with the foresight that Twitter has shown around TV. Here are the seven things I feel they are doing right, and what other social media platforms should emulate:

1. Re-Syndicating Twitter Content for Display:
Twitter has begun partnering with technology companies such as Mass Relevance who put real-time, curated social content and interaction into engaging brand experiences to web, mobile and TV. Mass Relevance’s technology is valuable because it filters the stream that comes gushing out of the Twitter fire hose so that only the highest quality tweets about a given subject are displayed. This, in turn, makes the user experience richer and encourages more engagement.

2. Focus on Analysis:
By Partnering with Crimson Hexagon, Twitter is making it easier for advertisers, TV shows, and news organizations to understand the meaning behind tweets. What Twitter users are thinking, feeling, and how they are reacting are key components to using social data to inform future decisions.

3. Working with Nielsen:
For now, Twitter is working with Nielsen, instead of against it. That’s a smart first move – collaborate rather than compete, as Twitter is still establishing its credibility as a reference to compare the popularity of various TV shows. But I expect that with time, Twitter data will actually become more relevant than traditional Nielsen ratings and replace them altogether. I have seen this happen with other data-driven businesses in the past, when I was an analyst with Gartner. The power of what I would call “crowd-sourcing ratings” – i.e. ratings by actual users rather than by “experts” – is widely underestimated. (More on that in an upcoming post.)

4. Becoming Part of the Infrastructure of TV:
Hashtags, Important words and terms, and usernames need to be in place on the Twitter platform before showing up on the screen. According to Twitter’s research, simply showing them on-air can double the online chatter. Twitter is working closely with advertisers and content producers to make sure that the structure is in place for them to take advantage of these opportunities.

5. Working with Apps Developers:
Second screen apps developers such as GetGlue and Miso enable TV audiences to easily engage on Twitter while watching TV. Research shows that between 60%-80% of TV viewers regularly are using a second device, so being able to automatically tweet on a second-screen while watching TV is an important element.

6. Working with Content Producers to Make TV Shows More Interactive:
With agreements such as one with The X Factor that created voting features to drive the program’s outcome, Twitter is working directly with show producers. Fans of live television events have been using Twitter to voice their opinions for quite a long time. This type of partnership enables the audience to now communicate directly with the show and legitimately affect the outcome.

7. Evangelizing to the Developer Community:
Twitter seems to understand what I would call “the power of the ecosystem.” They are making it easy for developers to leverage the opportunity by including on their developers’ site a “Best Practice Guide” which clearly explains how to integrate Twitter with TV programs. Smart move to win support.

Kudos to Twitter for showing an innovative approach to Social TV. These are good first steps. Let’s see if they can build a sustainable (as in “monetizable”) long-term business strategy based on these early building blocks.

An interesting development in the Social TV sphere came last week from the UK when London-based Social TV startup zeebox announced that it received a large investment from UK satellite TV broadcaster BSkyB.

The Social TV platform developed by zeebox allows users of “companion screens” (tablets, smartphones, etc.) to see who else is watching TV shows and interact with them via social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. It also facilitates targeted advertising of relevant ads to viewers. BSkyB’s stake in the company gives the broadcasting company exclusive UK rights to integrate zeebox’s technology into its own network of mobile apps.

Meanwhile in the US, TV providers are starting to move in a similar direction. Also last week, Time Warner increased its investment in second-screen app developer GetGlue. (read more here). The New York-based startup just announced a $12 million round of funding, led by Rho Ventures with the participation of existing investors, Time Warner, RRE Venture Capital and Union Square Ventures.

Perhaps this is a sign of things to come – other US TV broadcasters may see the light and start investing to improve the current TV viewing experience for their viewers. The currently complexity of trudging through hundreds of channels and badly designed on-screen menus, navigated via undecipherable remotes is going to start hurting the bottom line of those who don’t make efforts to simplify.

We may start to see a trend towards TV broadcasters developing their own investment strategy to improve the viewer’s experience instead of just letting venture capitalists fund the future of second screen startups and Social TV in general.

It’s interesting to see how Facebook discussions and Twitter chats are spinning off all sorts of related secondary activities. For example, the growing buzz around TV programs has spun off an entire ecosystem of data analytics companies that track what people are watching on TV and how. Trendrr, Bluefin Labs, and Netbase are all doing that, in addition to the analytics provided by Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

Through these stats, some interesting new trends are emerging, which I summarize in the graph below. What this graph illustrates is the evolution of how people engage around TV. The days when most of the social buzz around a particular TV show had a defined time boundary – while the show was on the air – are over. We are now entering a new era where social interaction around TV shows actually spans three different timeframes, represented by the three phases in the graph:

PHASE 1 – PRE-SHOW: The buzz starts building about what Rachel will do on the next episode of Glee. The Social Interaction Curve in Phase 1 reflects the buzz activity: it starts low on the vertical (BUZZ) and horizontal (TIME) axes and reaches its highest point at the end of Phase 1, just as the show is about to start.

PHASE 2 – DURING THE SHOW: The Social Interaction Curve during Phase 2 (as the show is on the air) goes through peaks and valleys, following real-time happenings. For example, during a football game buzz will peak during time-outs, especially right after a quarterback fumbles a ball and then drop as the action starts again and people concentrate on the game.

PHASE 3 – POST-SHOW: Buzz is still high after the show is off the air: “Can you believe that sick home-run by Alex Rodriguez?” and then tapers off with time.

The idea of people socializing around a TV program – be it a sports game, series, or current events – is not novel. An obvious example of such social happenings is Super Bowl parties, which have been around for years. People get physically together around a TV to watch not only the game but the pre- and post-game shows. Same idea with significant political events – like presidential debates – where the debate itself is now preceded by pre-shows describing candidates’ histories, backgrounds, etc. and post-shows analyzing what they said and comparing their positions.

What’s new about the current social engagement phenomenon is that it now goes into the “virtual” (physical proximity is no longer necessary) and can be extended to all sorts of shows, not limited only to a few choice programs that draw masses of viewers. In the future, any TV show triggering enough social engagement and buzz could be a candidate for pre- and post-show “wraparounds.” As I said in a previous blog this will turn TV content creation on its head and make social engagement the new determining factor in the creation of new shows.

If they play their hand well, content producers will have fantastic opportunities to precisely target the populations that are being tracked by Social TV apps and analytics companies. That is the Holy Grail for brands and Madison Avenue, and should thus translate into massive new revenues for the TV industry, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking companies that can help monetize the extended conversation around TV shows.