Twitter and TV integration: Good or bad?

Here are a handful of additional thoughts from today’s TVNext Summit at Hill Holliday in downtown Boston. Specifically, one of the hosts, Mike Proulx asked about the mindset behind using social media tools as an adjunct to TV entertainment. This includes Facebook, Twitter and other tools.

Here’s how the panel responded...

NBC’s Julie Detraglia said the network is paying attention to the social engagement that occurs during TV shows. Specifically tweets that are happening and trending during their broadcasts. One good perspective that she shared was that they are aware of people who are reading these tweets in addition to the folks who are actually tweeting.

David Ernst from Discovery Communications talked about sharing the TV experience. As we used to have a communal experience watching TV, now we have headed back to the communal watching experience - but now it’s virtual.

Lauren Vargas of Radian6 said we need to take backchannel conversations into consideration. To translate, backchannel is the chatter and conversations that happen behind the scenes. Just like millions of people were tweeting during the Olympics, these conversations are going to happen and companies should be aware of these.

Kay Madati of CNN said his network is trying to be very aware of the viewers’ experience. How tweets look on screen. What value they add. How people can interact and get value from the integration of data. Sometimes that type of social interaction isn’t right for a certain group of viewers.

David Levy of Philo said that guides are not useful anymore. Now people can find out what’s on by using their social connections. “What are your friends watching?”

More to come. Some photos are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffcutler/sets/72157... and the live stream is running at http://ustre.am/rtdu