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Darren Waters

TV becomes social again

  • Darren Waters
  • 25 May 08, 10:03 GMT

Remember the term "water cooler moment"; in which a TV show generated a social buzz and was talked about by colleagues at work after broadcast?

It seems to me that there are fewer and fewer water cooler moments, in part because television has become less of a cohesively social experience.

PVRS, video on demand, BitTorrent, digital download stores, DVD box sets have all helped to fracture the common viewing experience.

We tend to watch our TV content out of sync with one another these days.

But last night I experienced a water cooler moment as a programme was being broadcast. It was social TV at the point of broadcast, and it was thanks to .

Eurovision is precisely the kind of mass experience and mass participation event that made, and arguably still makes, TV so social.

People have parties, print off voting forms etc to help make the event more inclusive.

But that sense of common viewing is restricted to people in your living room, or friends pinging each other text messages.

Last night I was watching Eurovision with Twitter runnng on my laptop. In real time, my Twitter friends and I shared comments and made observations about the event as it was happening.

Twitter was being used to exend the experience of watching the event together, but also for people to .

Social TV became a kind of informed viewing experience. Amidst my friends and followers there were "power viewers", those who were able to add detail, explanation and expertise to the viewing, and "empowered viewers", those of us whose experience of combining TV and Twitter was made richer.

You could not only share pithy comments with friends on Twitter, but by searching for Eurovision on you could see what the whole Twitter community was saying about the event.

People were also encourage to "tag" their Eurovision comments using a hashtag, #eurovision, and so posts directly relating to the event could be .

Other Twitter services like could also be used to grab a wider flavour of the discussions and debate.

So does this mean anything? Arguably all Twitter did was turn an old fashioned mass participation event, viewing Eurovision, into the digital age.

But imagine how Twitter could be used to build instant communities around real time TV content, be it programmes or event TV?

The interesting thing about last night was that it was totally spontaneous. There may be resistance/reluctance to doing this on a more structured, premeditated basis; but it would be an interesting experiment.

Twitter plus TV = informed viewing.

I'm excited by the potential.


UPDATE:
My colleague Robin Haman, aka Cybersoc, has also about this.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    I was out last night, but I've seen this kind of Twitter tv backchannel occur on a few other occasions (The Apprentice, last weekend's screening of Indiana Jones, Doctor Who, etc etc).

    It would be an interesting exercise to scan Twitter and try and pick out tweets related to what's currently being broadcast (using a TV schedules feed).

  • Comment number 2.

    Hello Darren,

    I have to say, your 'tweets' last night, were actually far more entertaining than the show!


    @jimconnolly

  • Comment number 3.

    It certainly points the way to some uses for twitter beyond micro-blogging and life-streaming though clearly there were many twitter public timeline followers who were irritated by the dominant Eurovision swarming (I did personally use Summize to filter the Eurovision specific tweets) though currently such spontaneous events are pushing twitter's ability to cope to the limits. Inane or not last night was a good example of the social in social networking.

  • Comment number 4.

    I was as I always on IRC (that's one of the original Internet chat services without the ads, content filtering, and giant smiley faces) and we were commenting on Eurovision, nothing particularly unusual about it, we often comment on shows, Dr Who, The Apprentice, Primeval, US imports, etc.

    We all went in to hysterics over Sweden's scores, only for one of them to ruin it later on by revealing he was a Swedish comic and it was all on purpose!!

  • Comment number 5.

    Currently just in the U.S. and Canda, but I think you'd find the concept behind areyouwatchingthis.com interesting. It's a Flash Mob creator of sorts when things get exciting in the most DVR-resistant genre: Sport.

  • Comment number 6.

    Currently just in the U.S. and Canda, but I think you'd find the concept behind interesting. It's a Flash Mob creator of sorts when things get exciting in the most DVR-resistant genre: Sport.

  • Comment number 7.

    Political blogger Guido Fawkes does a live web chat on his site (order-order.com) during the TV broadcast of PMQs every week. Posters can comment in real time on the "action."

    I should also mention the rugby match "spoiler" threads on Gwladrugby.com, which are often more interesting and insightful than the TV commentaries!

  • Comment number 8.

    Is this any different to online chat - IRC etc? That's had live commentary and discussion on live events (e.g. TV) for decades... IRC may not be 'cool' any more, but it's still widely used, with close to a million users online at any moment...

  • Comment number 9.

    I wrote on a similar theme last year in a post entitled 'the digital water cooler' -

  • Comment number 10.

    With a working link this time:

  • Comment number 11.

    I find the concept of watching TV and operating a computer at the same time an odd one, and surely is not good for your eyes!

  • Comment number 12.

    On Australian radio there's a popular midnight quiz called The Challenge run by Tony Delroy, which has its own Facebook site with over a thousand members. It's quite common for Facebook members to post comments about the questions and answers as the quiz progresses.

  • Comment number 13.

    "People were also encourage to "tag" their Eurovision comments using a hashtag, #eurovision, and so posts directly relating to the event could be followed in real time."

    Great we could re-discover informed viewing...

    ...could #Questiontime help us re-discover informed democracy?

  • Comment number 14.

    I didn't watch Eurovision, I was playing Team Fortress 2 at the time, but I did know what was going on as several of the other players were watching and were using the voice chat.

 

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