Where Social TV Is Going Wrong — and How to Get It Right
Reblogged from AdAge, by Jeff Schroer
Strong Content and the First Screen Still Rule, Says iBubblr Co-Founder Jeff Schroer
It’s easy to see why social-media activity around TV is soaring. Shared experiences make our lives more meaningful. Consumers are always looking for simpler, richer, more meaningful ways to have these shared experiences, especially when it comes to TV, the most ubiquitous content distributor in history. And tablets and other connected devices are rapidly giving more consumers new ways to interact.
But why is Twitter so far ahead when it comes to bolstering the experience of watching, talking and sharing about TV?
As All Things D’s Peter Kafka put it when Zeebox came to the U.S., too many social-TV apps are “designed around a business problem — how can we get people to stay with our shows longer or hang out on our service? — instead of consumer problems.” Most social-TV aps are more interested in telling people what they should want than creating compelling experiences. People want meaningful engagements around TV content, not gimmicks meant to coax them into a desired behavior. And it had better be simple.
The biggest reason Twitter has the most of the social-TV market among consumers is that it’s the easiest way to have meaningful shared experiences around TV. Networks, brands and agencies, meanwhile, need data that are relevant to consumers’ core interests, not their threshold for incentive-driven, Pavlovian behavior — such as piling up awards points or stickers by checking on various social TV platforms.
While the market continues to flood with game-like social-TV products, however, real innovations that improve the consumer experience can go unnoticed… [Read More]
