SecondSync

7 Day Social TV Summary

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:06:00 +0100

Channel 4’s Skint Gets Viewers Talking

The first episode of Channel 4’s Skint got viewers talking this week, with 66,000 tweets from 40,000 individuals. The programme took 38.4% of TV related tweets during its 9-10pm slot, with the tweet demographics split completely evenly between male and female viewers. These high numbers put the programme second on our Monday social TV leaderboard, behind Made in Chelsea with 114,000 tweets.

The Apprentice Maintains High Engagement

The Apprentice on BBC1 maintained high viewer engagement this week, with 99,000 tweets during its third episode. The episode had a massive 81.1% of TV related tweets during its timeslot, and over a third of TV tweets for the day. The 17 tweets posted from Lord Sugar’s official Twitter account collectively had 4,500 retweets from viewers.

New Channel TLC Gets First Spot in Leaderboard

Newly launched Sky channel TLC featured in our social TV leaderboard for the first time this week. US reality show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was shown on the channel on Tuesday, receiving 11,000 tweets from viewers. The episode peaked at 586 tweets per minute as it started at 9pm on Tuesday, and continued with an average 200 tweets per minute for the rest of the 30 minute programme. The episode came third on our Tuesday leaderboard, behind MTV’s The Valleys and BBC3’s Sweat the Small Stuff.

Britain’s Got Talent is Weekend’s Most Tweeted

Britain’s Got Talent took the top spot for tweets this weekend, getting 123,000 tweets during its 5th episode of the series on Saturday. The episode averaged at 1,869 tweets per minute, resulting in a 56.9% share of TV related tweets for the show during its timeslot.

British Academy Television Awards Top 100k Tweets

The television BAFTAs topped our Sunday leaderboard this week with 106,000 tweets. Tweets about the awards were posted by 62,000 individuals, 46.7% of the posted from iPhone clients. The biggest peak in tweets came when E4’s Made in Chelsea won an award, resulting in 5,500 tweets mentioning the reality show.

For more social TV insights follow @SecondSync

by Kirsten Williams

Broadchurch: Most Tweeted Drama Episode

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:55:00 +0100

The final episode of ITV’s crime drama Broadchurch generated 260,000 tweets from 137,000 people last night, making it the most tweeted drama episode we’ve recorded to date. The episode topped popular ITV drama Downton Abbey and passed E4’s Misfits by over 150,000 tweets.

The series has seen high engagement from viewers on Twitter throughout and has been the number one most tweeted programme on our Monday leaderboard for 5 of its 8 episodes. This week’s high numbers saw it clear Made in Chelsea, Monday’s second most tweeted programme, by 100,000 tweets.

#Broadchurch trended on Twitter in the UK during the day leading up to the final episode and over 60,000 tweets about the programme were posted in the 30 minutes after the broadcast had finished, showing online interaction around the drama far exceeded the series’ 9-10pm time slot. Engagement was heightened by online content being released to fans via Twitter, including an extra scene that was shared just as the last episode ended. Posted by the official ITV Twitter account, the extra scene had over 3,000 retweets and has since been watched over 250,000 times by fans.

The episode had 65.9% of TV related tweets for it’s time slot and took a 43.6% share of all TV related tweets for the day, making it the most popular drama episode we have recorded. View content posted by viewers on Twitter at #Broadchurch.

by Kirsten Williams

Highest Viewer Engagement for Broadchurch

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 15:38:00 +0100

Conversation around ITV drama Broadchurch peaked at 47,000 tweets during its penultimate episode this week, doubling the 22,000 tweets posted during its first episode.

Tweets about who the main murder suspect in the series is have steeply grown in the last three episodes with 2,000, 4,000 and finally during this week’s episode over 5,000 tweets speculating who it could be. Over 31,000 unique Twitter users got involved with the whodunit drama during Monday’s episode, creating the highest peak in viewer interaction of the series with 2,600 tweets per minute being posted as the episode ended.

Twitter conversation during this week’s episode suggests that the character most suspected by viewers is now Nigel, who was mentioned in 1,200 tweets, followed by both Tom and the Vicar with 400 tweets each. Pauline Quirke’s character Susan was mentioned in 700 tweets but opinion is divided as to whether she is now a suspect or not, and finally Joe Miller had 170 tweets.

We expect viewer engagement around the final Broadchurch episode next Monday to be the highest of the series as the murderer is revealed, potentially taking more than the 31% share of TV related tweets this week’s episode had during its broadcast.

Follow tweets using #Broadchurch

by Kirsten Williams

Channel 4’s Dogging Tales Drives Twitter Conversation

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:44:00 +0100

Channel 4’s Dogging Tales, a documentary looking at the secret world of dogging, provoked a huge response on Twitter last night with just under 3% of its 1.99 million viewers taking to their second screens to tweet.

Within the first 15 minutes of the programme, there had already been over 22,000 tweets from viewers tuned in to Channel 4, which steeply rose to 117,000 for the whole broadcast. This large influx of tweets could have helped drive the higher than average viewer numbers the programme had, as the tweets below suggest. This is something we will be able to share more about once we have integrated BARB figures into our Twitter analysis.

Programmes like this with high tweet numbers can also benefit brands. The on-screen mention of Lynx during the first 10 minutes of the programme resulted in over 3,000 mentions of the brand on Twitter in relation to the broadcast, as well as over 1,500 tweets for Joop, which was also mentioned. This type of unexpected peak in brand exposure on Twitter can be used as a piece of positive marketing, as Lynx did with tweets last night and this morning. Lynx turned what could have been a negative association for their brand into a positive, making the connection between their product and the programme work perfectly. Their quick reaction provoked a positive response from Twitter users.

Good choice of fragrance over on @channel4 - guaranteed to get a bit more attention, whatever the situation..! #DoggingTales

April 4, 2013

‘Crisis meetings’ all morning thanks to Les in #DoggingTales last night… We’ve concluded there is no crisis twitter.com/lynxeffect/sta…

April 5, 2013

Tweets from over 132 verified Twitter accounts including highly followed users like Alan Carr, David Walliams, Louie Spence and pop band The Wanted also helped give the programme even higher exposure on Twitter, with a potential 120 million Twitter users seeing tweets in their timelines about the show.

This type of response on Twitter shows that shock value can prompt high numbers of viewers to share opinions on their second screens. With BARB figures integrated we will start to understand how it also drives tune-in.

By Kirsten Williams

Soap Tweets Reflect Explosive Storylines

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:12:00 +0000

Throughout 2012 we saw that twitter engagement around soaps is intimately tied to developments in the plot, and this week we’ve seen huge peaks around two of the major UK soap operas.

The storyline for Channel 4’s Hollyoaks this week led up to the exit of two of its major characters. The build up to the main villain’s exit started on Monday with the death of another character, prompting a peak of 2,188 tweets per minute for the episode, compared with the programme’s episode average of 1,700 for this year. As the plot developed throughout the week this peak reached 2,644 tweets per minute during Tuesday’s episode and then jumped to over 5,000 tweets per minute during Wednesday’s episode. The official Hollyoaks twitter account has been promoting the plotline with fans, sharing the hashtag #BrendansLastDance with all their tweets during each broadcast.

From an episode average of around 6,600 tweets for 2013, this week’s Hollyoaks episodes have been seeing numbers of 28,000, 29,000 and 52,000 tweets for each new broadcast consecutively, demonstrating how much the storyline can influence online engagement. The viewers taking to their second screens this week have continuously provided an online commentary of the action in the soap’s storyline. Our forthcoming BARB features will help to determine whether this helped push up viewing figures.

Coronation Street has also seen high numbers of tweets this week thanks to an explosive storyline, which saw the local pub go up in flames. From an episode average of 6,300 for this year, the soap saw tweet numbers soar to 20,000 and above, peaking at almost 7 times its average episode volume. The two episodes of the soap on Monday, which centered around the pub fire, got 60,000 tweets collectively, with the second episode of the evening pulling in 41,000 tweets from over 30,000 unique viewers.

Format Change Affects Twitter Engagement

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:12:00 +0000

Throughout 2012 we identified a number of engagement patterns around different genres of programmme, from interaction during soaps closely following the episode’s plotline, to tweet patterns for films repeating during different broadcasts.

Interaction around factual talk shows like Top Gear tends to follow the programme’s content, with peaks in engagement happening during the most compelling parts of the show. This gives this type of programme a number of spikes in interaction during its broadcast.

This weekend we saw a change in engagement around Top Gear during the second episode of the programme’s Africa Special. The episode was focused on the Top Gear team travelling around Africa and this one main theme saw interaction around programme mimic the type we would usually see with a television drama.

Around 30,000 of the programme’s 48,000 tweets were posted immediately before and during the first 10 minutes of the broadcast, and immediately after the programme had finished. This gave the programme a bookend pattern of engagement similar to BBC3 drama Being Human, which was broadcast during the same evening.

By Kirsten Williams

Using Social TV to Launch a Viral Ad Campaign

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:24:00 +0000

Every brand would love their campaign to go viral - but that’s notoriously difficult to achieve. The creatives that strive to make viral hits are akin to alchemists. The benefits are obvious, the potential to create millions of earned impressions for the brand. It’s therefore imperative that when you do have a potential viral hit on your hands you have a social strategy in place to give it the best possible chance of reaching the hallowed ground of viral success.

On Friday Three UK launched a new campaign that clearly got the creative part of the process spot on. It stars a moonwalking pony dancing to Fleetwood Mac, lots of boxes ticked there!

But as well as nailing the creative they also had the three key ingredients for a textbook social strategy in place:

1. On Screen hashtag

At the end of the spot they had the hashtag #DancePonyDance positioned prominently in the centre of the screen. Without this the ad might have a generated a decent number of tweets but lots of different hashtags would have been used, if used at all, and they would have lost the ownership of the social conversation.

2. Promoted tweets

The next thing they did right was to buy promoted tweets for the #DancePonyDance hashtag. This meant that anyone clicking on the hashtag would see the brand at the top of the timeline or if they had tweeted the hashtag they might have seen it in their own timeline.

3. Embedded video

Most importantly the tweet contained an embedded youtube video. This both allows the viewer to view the spot again and to easily share the video among their friends simply by retweeting the promoted tweet.

Want to catch the moonwalking pony again? He’s giving it a wiggle over on YouTube: youtu.be/Ekr05T9Iaio #DancePonyDance
— ThreeUK (@ThreeUK) March 2, 2013

At the time of writing the video had been viewed well over a million times despite the campaign only starting on Friday. In 5 hours of Friday night primetime the campaign generated almost 14k tweets. The biggest peak came during the first airing during Coronation St which had an audience of 8.5 million. This spot generated 2.4k tweets in the 10 minutes after airing. The second biggest peak came in Alan Carr’s Chatty Man, which has a much larger social audience.This generated 2.1k tweets in the first 10 minutes after airing despite the series only averaging under 2 million viewers. This shows that placing spots in shows with large social audiences is much more efficient for generating online buzz for a campaign.

A few months ago we wrote a post about another great piece of creative that targeted the highly social Made in Chelsea audience.

This had many of the ingredients to go viral, but without an integrated strategy in place the campaign didn’t capitalise on the strong Twitter reaction it gained. They didn’t use any on screen hash tags to own the conversation and they didn’t make the content easy to share by buying promoted tweets with embedded videos of the spot.

The end result is that despite generating thousands of tweets from the first couple of screenings alone there was no long tail to the engagement as too much was required of the viewer to share the content. To date the video has only got just over 9,000 views on youtube.

By Ted Littledale

Amplifying a show's message with Twitter

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:06:00 +0000

Last night we witnessed a highly successful use of Twitter by the campaigning TV show Hugh’s Fish Fight. The show managed to get thousands of tweets directed at UK supermarkets pressuring them to improve the sustainability practices of their prawn suppliers.

In recent years it has become commonplace to see Twitter used as as an informal petitioning tool. Its public nature means that corporations have to sit up and take notice when a larger group of individuals come together to voice their opinion on the highly visible social network.

It was therefore a natural choice for Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Fish Fight to turn to Twitter to put pressure on UK supermarkets to use their buying power to force improvements to the sustainability practices of Prawn farms in Thailand.

This was the message on the Fish Fight website:

Halfway through the show there was a call to action encouraging users to tweet ‘WHAT ARE YOUR PRAWNS EATING’ to three of Britain’s biggest supermarkets, Tesco, Morrisons and The Cooperative. They showed each of the supermarkets’ official Twitter handles on screen so the users knew who to send their tweets to.

The result was immediate and marked, the tweet rate for the show jumping to 2.2k tweets per minute:

The tweets were split fairly evenly between the three supermarkets, 8,066 to @UKTesco , 6,340 to @morrisonsnews and 6,607 @CooperativeFood

It’s a great example of how social TV audiences can be effectively harnessed to amplify messages and give them a life of their own online.

by Ted Littledale

New Series: Towie and Saturday Night Take Away

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:06:00 +0000

The first episode of The Only Way is Essex series 8 aired on ITV2 this weekend 207,000 tweets, over 25,000 more than the first episode of the last series of the reality programme. The transmission prompted 10,000 more people to take to their second screens to talk about the show than episode one of series 7, with almost 120,000 people tweeting about the programme as it aired.

Tweets using the programme’s hash tags accounted for over 80% of the TV related tweets around its transmission and almost half the television tweets for the day. The engagement around the show was helped by posts from verified twitter accounts, including cast members from the programme. The official TOWIE twitter account took questions from fans for cast member Joey Essex at the end of the programme, encouraging fans to carry on conversation around the show. The account also account provided commentary during the show itself, promoting a peak of almost 7,000 tweets about the show per minute.

The Only Way is Essex

This weekend also saw Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway return to ITV primetime with a new series, prompting over 134,000 tweets from viewers. The show had tweets from 83,000 viewers, peaking in the first 10 minutes of the programme at 4,000 tweets per minute. Posts from verified accounts including celebrities like Chris Moyles, Emma Bunton and Robbie Williams, who was a guest on the show, helped increased engagement giving the show 60% of TV related tweets during it’s broadcast.

Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway

by Kirsten Williams

We're hiring!

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:50:15 +0000

SecondSync is growing! We’re looking to fill a couple of exciting roles: a Twitter TV Researcher/Analyst, and a backend developer.

Check out our jobs section for more details and how to apply.

By Dan Fairs

Duncan Jones brings you closer

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:57:00 +0000

One of Twitter’s mantras is “Twitter brings you closer”. They especially like to emphasise how Twitter can makes watching TV show a more immersive and personal experience. Over Christmas I came across a great example first-hand of Twitter ‘bringing me closer’, which I thought I’d share.

‘Moon’ is one of my favourite movies of the last few years, a beautiful, intelligent, haunting sci-fi film that harked back to an age when Science Fiction was about big ideas and not big budgets. So seeing it in the Christmas schedule as part of a double bill with Blade Runner, I made an appointment to view. I mostly stayed off Twitter during the film as, despite many previous viewings, I was still completely engrossed. I did pull my phone out to tweet this however during a particularly heart wrenching scene, if only to distract myself from the sadness of it:

That bit in #moon always gets me.
— ted littledale (@_superted) December 30, 2012

I then spotted in my timeline that someone had retweeted this tweet from Duncan Jones, the director of Moon, talking about the same point in the film.

Getting excited now!Almost at my big heart-breaker shot.still makes me sad! #moonbbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

It turns out that, having himself spotted in the Radio Times that Moon was going to be making it’s ‘proper telly’ premiere, Duncan Jones had decided to arrange a tweetalong with himself and various members of the crew, including Concept Artist and VFX Supervisor, Gavin Rothery and composer, Clint Mansell amongst many others. You can see a more comprehensive storify of the tweetalong but here are some highlights.

Making a quick reference to Blade Runner which aired directly afterwards:

So this opening ad is not in the script.at all!Was somethign I came up with while we were in the edit, and needed a way to… #moonbbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

…get the exposition out the way without having to do a text crawl, like SOME other films that are playing after Moon! #MoonBbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

Talking about how they got Kevin Spacey on board:

Somebody just asked how we got Kevin Spacey involved.Well, we couldnt, at first.He was understandably cautious.#moonbbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

We actually werent able to convince KS to be Gerty until after the film was completed & he saw Sam Rockwells performance #MoonBbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

Expaining some of the thinking behind GERTY and comparisons with HAL from 2001: A space Odyssey:

A question about Gerty’s voice and Hal.I wanted Gerty to be the anti-Hal.Use the audiences expectations against them! #Moonbbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

Question about Gerty’s face.Emoticons are a new part of our language.A shorthand for emotional stance. It felt right!#Moonbbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

Clint Mansell talking about his score:

@samochandler @manmademoon this is one of my favourite pieces of work but its so easy to write to a performance like Sam Rockwell gives..
— Clint Mansell (@iamclintmansell) December 30, 2012

A nod to Chesney Hawkes’ ‘The One and Only’ featuring in the film:

Chesney absolutely a conscious choice.After doing it, I decided to use it again in Source Code, & now, it will be in everything! #moonbbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

Chesney himself even got involved:

I landed safe n sound backing Blighty…now watching ‘Moon’ with the ol man on BBC2! @manmademoon #MoonBbc2
— Chesney Hawkes (@ChesneyHawkes) December 30, 2012

The reasoning behind featuring ping pong in the film:

Why ping pong?Had table as a kid, but not enough friends to play all the time.Ended up playing against it folded :( #moonbbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

Playing a folded ping pong table is a great, quick metaphor for loneliness as well.
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

Duncan talking about his cameo as a female computer voice:

Post editor @bazzybazbazbaz has joined us!He just reminded me that the lady computer voice in vehicles.. is me! pitch shifted #moonbbc2
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) December 30, 2012

This is just a small selection and I highly recommend fans of the film visit the storify page.

It was great to go through all the tweets after the movie ended (with Blade Runner on in the background). Not only was it interesting hearing little tidbits about the film, but there was something about the fact all these people were watching and talking about the film at the same time as you that made it somehow much more personal than something like a DVD commentary. Twitter really did make the experience much more intimate and engaging.

by Ted Littledale

7 Twitter TV engagement patterns from 2012

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:03:00 +0000

Conversations around the TV schedule happen on all social networks, but the most compelling insights come from Twitter. This is because it’s a public platform without the privacy issues of Facebook, its users embrace the immediacy of microblogging and the Tweet (being 140 chars or less) lends itself to being made into a metric.

On Twitter the signal bursts through the noise to reveal very clear patterns of engagement around TV shows. We often hear commentators talking about social media ‘buzz’ around broadcasts but the reality is much more nuanced. Different genres, time slots and demographics display different patterns of engagement.

We seen over 20 repeating patterns of engagement and we will be releasing a white paper documenting them in early 2013. In the meantime here are a few examples from the last 12 months.

1) Dramas generate a bookend pattern of engagement.

2) Some shows demonstrate a remarkable viewer to tweet conversion. This episode of Made in Chelsea saw 25% of the audience sending a Tweet.

3) Engagement around soaps is tied intimately to developments in the plot. The spike below is the response to the unveiling of the identity of Kat’s secret lover.

4) Twitter is often a barometer for public opinion. James Arthur attracted more tweets from day one on X Factor - long before he was identified as a contender by the judges. He went on to win the show.

5) Some shows initiate a conversation that extends way past the end of the broadcast. The 15 Stone Babies on Channel 4 is a good example.

6) Getting talent to live-tweet during broadcasts drives engagement. MTV are particularly good at this with The Valleys and Geordie Shore.

7) Tweet patterns for films repeat themselves. These two broadcasts of Dirty Dancing shown six months apart display almost identical Twitter engagement patterns.

The big players in audience measurement are now taking Social TV seriously. Social data will never replace panel data but it is a compelling augmentation. A year ago our statistics documented an interesting audience behaviour, in 2013 they are shaping up to become part of the audience measurement orthodoxy.

By Andy Littledale

Riding the coat-tails of Social TV

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:39:00 +0000

We’re often asked what is the significance of a show having high social ratings. One of the key benefits we see is that if offers an opportunity for brands to tap into this social audience. Two weeks ago Freeview launched the following spot, by creative agency The Outfit, during Made in Chelsea which is a great example of this.

Tonight the last episode of the current series of Made in Chelsea airs, ending a 10 week run. I’ve watched most of the previous 9 episodes, purely for research purposes you’ll understand. As one of the top ranking shows socially, averaging over 100k tweets per episodes, I feel it’s my duty to watch it. You may not have seen the show yourself so I thought I’d share some insights into why it’s such a social success.

Social statistics for the current series of Made In Chelsea

The show has an incredibly loyal social fan base who love to tweet their commentary on whatever love triangle is happening on any given week, show their disapproval at love rats, we’re looking at you Jamie, or comment on cast members olfactory organs:

I CAN’T STOP LOOKING AT HIS NOSTRILS. I WANT TO SWIM IN HIS NOSTRILS #madeinchelsea
— Rick Edwards (@rickedwards1) October 15, 2012

The E4 official Made in Chelsea twitter account, currently run by Layla West, does a great job contributing to this conversation and curating the best of the audience tweets:

YES“@barneschar: Mark Francis’ Pineapple Face - uncanny resemblance to Shrek Gingerbread Man @e4chelsea @laidinchelsea twitter.com/barneschar/sta…”
— Made in Chelsea (@E4Chelsea) November 26, 2012

So going back to the Freeview+ campaign, we tracked mentions of Freeview for 10 minutes after the ads aired for the last two weeks and found that the spots generated over 1000 mentions on Twitter over the two 10 minute periods immediately after the advert.

Mentions of Freeview on Twitter driven by Made in Chelsea ad slot.

What is incredible is how positive the reaction to the spot was, I couldn’t find a single negative comment amongst the tweets. This is an unedited list of the first 10 tweets about the advert to give you a flavour, the 1000+ tweets that followed are pretty much more of the same.

The first 10 tweets about the Freview advert

Another benefit of targetting Made is Chelsea is that most of the cast, who have large numbers of Twitter followers, tweet along to the show. The star of the advert was one of those tweeting and he also commented on the advert.

Yes freeview ad!! Was not expecting that!! Haha
— Spencer Matthews (@SpencerGeorgeM) December 3, 2012

The Freeview spot is a great example of how you can intelligently target social audiences to get some of their buzz to rub off on your brand.

By Ted Littledale

I'm a celebrity tweeting about I'm a celebrity

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:09:00 +0000

As is traditional at this time of year, our TV scheduled are interrupted by three weeks of jungle based celebrity shenanigans, otherwise known as I’m a Celebrity get me out of here.

Of course this is a format that lends itself well to Social TV, and it certainly delivered in terms of numbers getting 441,737 tweets from 258,527 unique accounts last night.

What was interesting was how many other Celebrities were tweeting about the show, they obviously quite enjoy seeing their peers suffering! There were over 400 tweets from 131 different verified accounts last night. Here’s a brief flavour:

I thought you were doing #CBB @hollywills ? And I was doing #IACGMOOH ! ;)
— Phillip Schofield (@Schofe) November 11, 2012

Everyone seems unusually sane so far! #imaceleb
— OfficialAmandaHolden (@Amanda_Holden) November 11, 2012

I love Linda and Charlie #imaceleb
— Denise Van Outen(@denise_vanouten) November 11, 2012

Love #ImACelebrity .. @antanddec are TV gold… Crafty Cockney Eric to win it is my prediction….
— Michael Vaughan (@MichaelVaughan) November 11, 2012

The Twitter audience was also engaging in their own fun and games, coming up with their lists of celebrities that they would like to see next year, using the hashtag #NextYearsJungle. In fact the most retweeted Tweet during the transmission was one of these tweets:

#NextYearsJungle Keith LemonMiranda hartAlan CarrJoey EssexDerren BrownBoris JohnsonCheryl Cole Rylan Clarke Roy Cropper
— Mory Riller. (@rorytheracincar) November 11, 2012

Nadine Dorries’ decision to enter the jungle this year has caused a great deal of controversy. I’m not sure the political blogger Guido Fawkes and the Guardian Science team would normally tweet about I’m a Celeb so she’s certainly broadened the appeal. Here are their tweets and a couple of others about the MP for Mid Bedfordshire:

Quelle surprise, posh boy Hugo doesn’t like Nadine. Did he go to Eton? #Imacelebrity
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) November 11, 2012

Nadine Dorries and the power of humiliation gu.com/p/3bmvc/tf
— Guardian Science (@guardianscience) November 11, 2012

The BEST way to discuss ideologically driven abortion term limit reduction is with a mouthful of kangaroo testicle. #IACGMOOH
— Marcus Brigstocke (@marcusbrig) November 11, 2012

Nrly time for IAACGMOOH. Go @nadinedorriesmp - eating kangaroo balls now’t compared with the day job. NB - don’t 4get to Sky+ Homeland ppl!
— Sally Bercow (@SallyBercow) November 11, 2012

Nadine wasn’t the most talked about celebrity though, David Haye and Helen Flanagan got far more mentions. 63 thousand tweets mentioned David and 47 thousand tweets mentioned Helen while only 10 thousand talked about the MP:

Bless Helen and that mascara scar down her face #imacelebrity
— heat & heatworld (@heatworld) November 11, 2012

Helloooooo David haye !!! X
— Gemma Collins (@missgemcollins) November 11, 2012

At the other end of the spectrum Linda had the least mentions with just 2,657. It will be interesting to see if the lack of tweets translates into a lack of votes when the evictions begin.

by Ted Littledale

Why the tweet is the de facto currency of Social TV

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 18:40:00 +0000

At SecondSync we like to stick to a simple definition of Social TV. It describes the way that social media has taken conversations around TV shows from the living room and onto the internet. It’s a trend that is growing exponentially in popularity. The number of people participating, and the amount of data it is generating, is staggering.

TV related discussion exists on all social networks but in terms of real-time public conversation, not check ins, ‘likes’ or downloads, Twitter dominates and the tweet has become the de-facto currency of social TV.

As a company we are focused on creating social media metrics for TV. There are three things about Twitter that make it unique in this area.

Immediacy. People tend to tweet when they are most engaged with a show. Analysing tweet patterns identifies sections of a show that resonate particularly with the audience. Different genres, demographics and time slots display very different patterns of engagement.
The public nature of the data. Twitter is a public platform and its users treat it as such.
The consistent nature of the data (140 chars or less) lends itself to being made into a metric.

Every month we see an increase in the percentage of the TV audience tweeting but on 15th October 2012 we saw something extraordinary. The premiere of the new series of Made in Chelsea attracted an audience of 452,000 viewers on E4. Our platform identified 215,220 tweets aimed at the show from 110,170 unique users during its transmission window. That’s a staggering one in four of the audience tweeting about the show! It was a watershed moment.

Analysing these conversations is generating audience insights that are being used by our clients across several areas of their businesses. As the uptake of this behaviour continues to grow, the insights generated will become more compelling, and while other social networks remain largely private, Twitter will continue to dominate this space.

by Andy Littledale

Twitter reaction to BBC Panorama Savile investigation

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 14:02:19 +0100

Last night’s Panorama Special covered the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal and the events surrounding the dropping of a Newsnight investigation into the matter.

The investigation was of course shocking in what it revealed about the scale of the abuse and covered in detail the events surrounding the dropped Newsnight investigation and it was fascinating to see the depth of feeling expressed in the 38,243 tweets about the programme. It was also refreshing that vast majority of tweets took the subject matter seriously, with relatively few cheap jokes to be found.

A lot of the tweets expressed a mixed sentiment of horror at the failures of the BBC but huge praise for the programme itself and the fact the BBC had chosen to air such a self critical piece, including this from Rufus Jones which was the most retweeted of the night:

This Panorama about the BBC at its worst is the BBC at its best.
— rufus jones (@rufusjones1) October 22, 2012

Another similar tweet from Iain Dale:

This Panorama programme is the BBC at its best. Shame it also reveals the BBC at its very worst. Incredible stuff. Superb journalism.
— Iain Dale (@IainDale) October 22, 2012

There were also tweets from those involved in the story itself including from Liz Macklean, the Newsnight correspondent at the heart of the investigation:

#Panorama not comfortable viewing for anyone involved, no doubt, but glad it’s all been said and Karin heard
— Liz Mackean (@lizmackean) October 22, 2012

Liz Macklean recieved lots of praise for her part in the investigation:

Amid all this BBC slagging this Panorama shows great journalists like Liz McKean do heroic work. #panorama #Newsnight
— boydhilton (@boydhilton) October 22, 2012

Others felt that Peter Rippon should have appeared on the programme to give his version of events:

What a shame Peter Ripponchose not to talk to Panorama.#BBC #Panorama
— Phillip Schofield (@Schofe) October 22, 2012

Another thing to note is that the show had a very long tail of engagement. Even though the show finished at 11.40pm the tweet rate remained high after the show ended:

A visualisation of tweets for the BBC Panorama Special

For us it was another example to dispel the myth that Twitter engagement is limited to lightweight television programming.

by Ted Littledale

X Factor doubles Twitter engagement

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 10:03:52 +0100

This weekend saw the start of The X Factor live shows, an event that is one of the biggest in the autumn TV schedule. The shows are produced by FremantleMedia UK and their interactive team have been using our platform throughout the series for real time monitoring of Twitter reaction. As product director at SecondSync I went along to the studio to help the team.

As expected the first show got a huge amount of tweets, reaching a total of 818,128 tweets from 312,012 unique users. That’s the largest amount we’ve seen for a show since we started monitoring all UK television at the beginning of May (this doesn’t include news and sport, see this blog post for an explanation of why we treat these broadcasts differently).

A visualisation of tweets for the first 2012 X Factor Live Show

We used our historical access to the Twitter firehose to compare these figures to the first live show of last year. The total number of tweets more than doubled from the 385,062 in Oct 2011 and there was an even bigger increase in the total number unique users, up almost 200,000 from the 119,600 last year.

A visualisation of tweets for the first 2011 X Factor Live Show

Saturday’s show peaked at 14,013 tweets per minute during James Arthur’s performance. James was also the most talked about act, getting mentioned in 52,000 tweets. Last year’s first live show peaked at 5,129 TPM.

This graph shows tweets that mention James overlayed on top of the graph of all the tweets about X Factor

As well as the big increase in the total number of tweets, there has also been a big jump in the number of verified accounts tweeting about the show. On Saturday there were tweets from 208 different verified accounts, last year there were only 79.

We see this increase as part of an overall trend trend of increased social media activity around TV broadcasts. It also reflects the increased effort that shows like the X Factor make to engage their Social TV audience.

by Ted Littledale

Pivoting

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:41:00 +0100

Pivoting is firmly embedded in modern technology startup culture. The common wisdom, for what it’s worth, is that if you haven’t pivoted, then you’re not really innovating. It’s something some investors look for: evidence that the team behind a startup has the wisdom to realise that they need to change direction, and what that new direction should be. Pivoting your business shows that you understand when something isn’t working, have the courage and ability to change it, and aren’t afraid to admit that perhaps your first idea wasn’t the best.

SecondSync itself has pivoted at least once: we started life producing a second screen application for the BBC’s Frozen Planet series. We quickly realised, however, that there was far greater value in that little Twitter widget at the side of the screen. Our user testing showed that it was social media that was driving engagement, not our application. So we pivoted. And now we’re an analytics company.

This ability to respond to change is in the DNA of successful startups, and is often evident throughout the business. As Technical Director, I’ve overseen (and usually implemented!) several generations of technology powering the SecondSync platform. This has been in response to customer demand, to growing volumes of data within the platform, and - because nobody gets it all right first time - to weaknesses within the platform itself.

Iterating your business’ technology stack quickly and reliably is challenging. Keeping up the pace of innovation is paramount. You and your team must have no ego about those technologies that you’ve built but must now be thrown away. You must all have no qualms about moving outside of your comfort zone, trying (and often taking a risk on) new technologies. Finally, you all need the technical ability to implement these changes, and to measure their effectiveness.

Humility, courage and ability: while the business pivots, the technology pivots, and the marketing story pivots, it is around these three qualities that the company as a whole turns.

by Dan Fairs, Technical Director

Owning the conversation around event broadcasts

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 10:40:00 +0100

So the first weekend of Olympic action has finished and I’ve been putting in some serious hours of Olympics watching, mostly on TV but with a very wet trip to the Mall in between. The BBC coverage has been outstanding with seemingly unlimited viewing options, having broadcasts on three BBC channels as well as a red button service and a plethora of options online.

One thing that has been noticeably absent from their coverage however is any promotion of hashtags during coverage. We’ve become used to seeing the BBC promote their own hashtags, such as #bbcqt, during their broadcasts so it was surprising that they didn’t push #bbc2012 which is the hashtag being used by official BBC twitter accounts.

As a result the numbers of tweets we’ve been seeing for the BBC broadcasts have been surprisingly low (note we’re not tracking generic tags such as #olympics as we want to focus on the broadcast itself and we outline our reasons here). It has also meant that there has been a lot of fragmentation of the hash tags being used, during the opening ceremony we saw #bbcolympics being used almost as much as #bbc2012. There was also a lot of fragmentation of the generic, non-BBC, hashtags being used alongside the BBC hashtags with #olympicceremony, #london2012 and #olympics all getting large numbers.

This demonstrates the need to actively promote programme hastags in order to avoid conversations about the coverage itself being lost in the general chatter about the event. The BBC may have their own reasons for not promoting #bbc2012 but we feel like they’ve missed an opportunity to own the conversation happening around their coverage.

By Ted Littledale

Our plans for the Olympics and Paralympics

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:53:00 +0100

At SecondSync we treat sport and news differently to other programmes. We have written a previous blog post explaining our reasons for this.

As our primary interest is audience reaction to broadcasts we intend to cover Twitter reaction to the coverage of the Olympics rather than engagement with the events themselves.

We will not track general tags like #olympics and #london2012 but we will be tracking broadcast specific tags such as #bbc2012, #bbcolympics and mentions of presenter names. These are already being used in discussions around coverage by the BBC, who are covering the Olympics in the UK.

Loving the football coverage #bbc2012 but please stop that stupid noise when showing replays #mutethetv
— Kevin Hoffman (@kevihoff) July 26, 2012

We will be doing to the same for the Paralympics on Channel 4 and will share insights on this blog.

By Andy Littledale