How Twitter Has Changed How We Watch TV, SXSW 2013Jenn Deering Davis, Ph.D.Co-Founder, Union Metrics

jenn@unionmetrics.com | @jdeeringdavis

Overview• Twitter stats

• 400M tweets posted every day• More than 200M monthly active users

• TV stats• 41% of tablet owners & 38% of smartphone owners use their devices while watching

TV daily• 1/3 Twitter users post about TV (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/

194656/will-twitter-eliminate-social-tv-apps.html#ixzz2Mimzy6p5)• Of those who post about TV shows, 76% do so live (http://

www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/facebook-twitter-social-media-study-302273#19)

• What makes a show good on Twitter?• Needs to be watched live • Unexpected and juicy events, cliffhangers • Programs like sports, reality, dramas, big one-time events

TV Show Types and Social Patterns • Ongoing shows (i.e., dramas and reality)

• PLL - 25 million tweets in 2012• Walking Dead - one of the most watched cable shows on TV, 12+ million viewers,

10K tpm spikes• XFactor - 14 million tweets in 2012 (Tune in With Twitter report, 2013)

• Live one-time events (i.e., awards shows, sports)• 13.7 million Super Bowl-related tweets in 2012 versus 24.1 million in 2013, • 231K tpm in 2013• UEFA Champions League - 110K tpm• Awards shows like the Golden Globes, Grammys (14MM in 2013 and 5MM in 2012,

116 TPM) and Oscars• Netflix and all-at-once streaming

• House of Cards • Arrested Development

Social Strategies to Engage with Viewers• Building interest before a new show or season

• The first week on air in fall 2011, Terra Nova - FOX’s now canceled, super expensive dinosaur show - only generated 90,000 tweets. To compare, PLL saw that kind of volume in an hour or two hours.

• Raising Hope premiered the first episode of season 3 on Twitter for a week before it aired on TV

• Golden Globes and all the tweets in the weeks leading up to the show• Discovery to help viewers find new shows to watch

• House of Cards - saw so many tweets about it in my own stream that I finally watched it, same goes for the most recent episode of The Walking Dead

• Three out of 10 people watched a TV show because of something they read or saw on a social network (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/facebook-twitter-social-media-study-302273#20)

• Jumping on trends and popular hashtags - using what people are already talking about to promote a show

• Tweeting from celebs/talent people already follow - tapping into existing fan base• Twitter promoted products boost discovery and maintains some residual lift

• Fan engagement • Tweeting as characters, like Archer, accounts are run by the voice actors - Lucky Yates

and Amber Nash• Golden Globes - polled audience to make sure they posted pictures of fan’s favorite

celebrities, Content exhaust - posting pics of backstage, behind-the-scenes,• Sharing fan-generated content• Live-tweeting events to share in experience - Super Bowl. - 51% tweet about shows to

feel connected to others who might also be watching.• Super Bowl hashtag use in commercials

• In 2011, Audi was the first commercial to use a hashtag in its ad, in 2013 more than half the ads had them

• In 2011, we tracked fewer than 400,000 tweets about commercials and this year there were 100x that (3.9 million “social” mentions, which includes Facebook)

• Real-time participation during shows• @ABCFPLL - tweet about what’s happening, using hashtags• Encouraging live viewing • Gets harder and harder to avoid spoilers - #thewalkingdead, #tobysdead• American Idol using real-time fan meter for quick polls• GRAMMYs - had iPads around the venue where attendees could tweet and post photos

to share, lots of tweets from backstage and RTs from celebs• Golden Globes - asked questions of winners backstage from Twitter, posted questions

and answers on Twitter during the show• Trending topics - TV shows seek these out, but most people don’t use them

• Feedback • Twitter provides a real-time feedback/focus group

• Simon Cowell says Twitter is like having a bunch of producers• Fans more important than critics? On The Walking Dead - Carl’s characters has

improved over the past few seasons, did fans help with this?• "Tweet Your Own Adventure" Hawaii Five-O• One caution - how reflective is Twitter audience of larger audience? They might be

noisier and more passionate than the larger fan base, and recent research from Pew suggests they might also be more negative. So we want to be careful about how much let what Twitter fans say dictate changes to shows.

What’s Next?• Hashtag evolution - we all use them now, so what’s next? • Cross platform integration - seeing lots of creative uses of different channels. 79% of

connected television viewers visit Facebook while watching TV (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/facebook-twitter-social-media-study-302273#19)

• Native advertising - more interesting and integrated ads, better targeting, more successful• Oreo during Super Bowl blackout, reactivating to real-time events• Adidas (D Rose in October got 4500 tweets, fan screencap on Tumblr more than

380K notes since September)• Adapting storylines based on Twitter - how much of a focus group is Twitter, and how

much should it be? • How does streaming/time-shifted viewing factor in to how we talk about shows on social

media?