Weekly digest 4th May

The GC trends on Twitter

No doubt about the most talked about show of the week. TV3’s ‘The GC’ has become New Zealand’s most talked about show on Twitter, with six of the country’s top trending topics and even making it to the global list. Over 10,000 tweets were sent about the show which, if nothing else, goes to show that Twitter is a viable platform here. Much of the conversation has been negative in tone so without sentiment tracking, it’s hard to know what value TV3 would have got out of this chatter. TVNZ is about to launch with a social media monitoring tool called Brandtology which will empower us to monitor the sentiment of conversation around our own launches giving us more insight into social engagement than simple volume.

Interestingly, the high volume of conversation on Twitter has also been mirrored on Facebook, with The GC page has receiving almost 10000 likes so far. However, that’s only about a thousand more than the “Cancel the GC” Facebook group. Speaking of which, image of the week has to go to this artistic impression of the experience of watching the show…

LinkedIn buys SlideShare for $119 million

The world’s largest professional network LinkedIn has bought one of the world’s largest professional content sharing networks. LinkedIn currently has 161M members while SlideShare attracts 29M unique visitors per month. Together they’ll have the power to connect professionals to each other through either social interaction or content.

TVNZ can utilise both these platforms to strengthen our trade and employment brand as well as to strengthen connections with other brands. On an individual level, SlideShare is a great way of discovering and spreading professional knowledge. If you don’t use either platform, feel free to give me a shout and I’ll happily take you through them.

Facebook is all action

Facebook announced on Wednesday that their long awaited “action links” are now available. This gives developers the ability to create custom actions within Facebook beyond the “like” button. So now we could have an “add to playlist” button or a “watch this” button around our video content.

If we want to get playful with this, there’s nothing stopping us using other verbs like “hate” or “eat” – you can see how these might fit with our soap villains and recipes (I think it’s that way around). Regardless of the creative application, there’s definitely scope for us to use this to place our content in more of a genuine social context.

Social media is an extension of entertainment and used to listen, rather than speak
A recent Hollywood Reporter study in the US suggested that 88% of people consider social media sites to be entertainment. Among Generation-C respondents (Connected Generation of digital natives) the two favourite pastimes are viewing social networking sites and listening to music, finishing ahead of watching TV shows, movies, or video clips, or instant messaging.

Multitasking also seems to be the method of choice when people do choose to watch the telly, with 79% of those surveyed reporting that they log onto Facebook while watching television. Overall, when asked how they participate in social media, 67% reported listening to and reading what others say, while just 33% said they express thoughts and opinions.

15% of Twitter users seek journalists and reporters, compared with only 9% of Facebook users, and actors are sought on Twitter by 41% of users, versus 32% of Facebook users.

This backs up my belief that people choose to engage with brands and causes on Facebook, whereas on Twitter they seek a more personal connection. That makes Twitter a great fit for harnessing the power of our on-screen talent and work is going into this in a news context as we speak.

NBC makes politics a game

In America, NBC and msnbc.com launched the NBC Politics iPad and iPhone app and while it features political news and video (which are really mandatory offerings), an interactive game lets users take on the pundits and play their own election scenarios.

Political junkies start with a blank battleground map or pick from NBC’s current projection or past election results. The name of the game is to predict which states will fall — or will likely fall — to Obama or Romney, to total 270 electoral votes for the win. Users can test out different scenarios, play along with NBC News experts and create personalized outcomes with the chance to see their map on-air or online. They can then share their maps with their friends and there are rewards available for those who come closest to the real outcome.

The NZ market may makes such offerings unviable in the political arena, but this is a great example of a network thinking outside the box and creating content that is specifically tailored to the platforms on which it will appear. Social content needs to be involved, fun, shareable and remarkable, not just a straight duplication of traditional broadcast content. NBC have done that brilliantly with this app and we should think about how we can do the same around our key properties.

Interesting chart of the week