Twitter's User Problem

Twitter announced its latest earnings this week, and the one thing that stood out during the call was the lack of any significant user growth. In addition to sending Twitter’s stock prices downwards, the revelation served to highlight the social platform’s biggest problem: its inability to attract a broad user base of the sort that might prove useful to the television networks they’ve spent so much time and effort trying to attract.

Adding insult to injury, Twitter released its first ever TV commercials on Tuesday night during Game One of the Mets-Royals World Series and the spots, which focused on Twitter’s new Moments feature, were routinely trashed. “Confusing” and “Incomprehensible” were two of the more printable epithets.

While many observers blame Twitter’s problems on the fact that it is can seem impenetrable for newcomers, I think the problem is more basic than that. I think Twitter’s problem lies in the fact that only a certain percentage of the population is comfortable putting their thoughts out there publicly and there’s nothing the platform can do to get them over that psychological barrier.
So rather than fight that problem, Twitter needs to roll with it. They need to make it easy for people to become “read-only” members, creating a version of the app that allows them to read tweets and possibly favorite them, without any pressure to retweet or respond.

That means accepting that for many users, Twitter will be a broadcast medium rather than a social one.

I don’t see that as a problem however, as given the large number of celebrities and media figures already on the platform, Twitter already functions that way for many users.
What’s more, this setup will make Twitter a more attractive platform for TV networks, who are looking to use it as a way to drive tune-in. By giving users a way to see all the second screen content a show is putting out, while receiving notifications each time their favorite shows and/or actors update their accounts, Twitter can give TV networks the type of delivery system they’re looking for.

This will be a win for both parties, for as I outlined in my recent report on Social TV, Twitter is currently headed for a significant decline as linear viewing tapers off (making a real time platform less relevant) and as networks increasingly see social as a paid platform (making their stagnant user base less attractive.)

A Change Has Got To Come

A read-only platform does not have to mean the end of Twitter as a social platform for those who want it. But if Twitter is serious about growing its user base, it will need to become proactive about creating a user experience that appeals to a broader base of users. This is critical, as one of the frequent complaints about Twitter that I hear from network executives is that the current user base consists of dozens of niche “villages” created by specific types of users, making it hard for programs who don’t hit those demographics to get any sort of traction on Twitter. A broader, more accessible platform will eliminate that issue.

To learn more about the future of Social TV, check out my new report at TDG Research

Twitter Is A Broadcast Network. Not A Social Network. Deal With It.

Dick Costolo started his career at Twitter with one of the classic tweets of all time. He ended with an equally ironic blast, but what happened in between was often not very pretty.

Costolo had something close to an impossible job: take the only social media platform that huge swaths of humanity seemed to actively dislike and turn it into something profitable and long-lasting.

Twitter’s biggest problem has always been the size of its audience, its inability to expand beyond the odd amalgam of media types, celebrities, teenage girls, urban youth, techies and porn stars who make up the bulk of its user base, so that it’s able to attract the sort of mass audience advertisers and data collectors can find on Facebook.

In his defense, Costolo was a very smart guy who made some very clever moves. Chief among them was the decision to launch third party tweet ads.

This was a brilliant move because all those people who “hate Twitter” are generally intrigued by what’s trending on the platform, and so the ability to surface tweets from actors, journalists and the like on third party sites (with embeddable, clickable video, no less) promises to be a huge win.

Where Costolo kept getting tripped up however, was in the Attracting New Users department. According to eMarketer, Twitter’s monthly user base will grow 14.1 percent this year, down from 30 percent growth two years ago, with a projected user growth rate of just 6 percent by 2019.

We all know why that is, and yet so few of the Silicon Valley crew are willing to say it: You need a certain type of personality to feel comfortable tweeting. It does not come naturally to most people. And more importantly, it never will. Posting on Twitter is the internet equivalent of standing up in front of a crowd and giving a speech and that’s just not something most people would do without a compelling reason, like having a gun pointed at their head.

In a heartfelt 8,300 word essay released earlier this week, investor Chris Sacca outlined some ways he felt Twitter could save itself. Some made a lot of sense, like his suggestion that Twitter introduce a live public feed where TV shows could introduce tweets from “the actors themselves, the show’s official account, some parody accounts, hobbyist commentators, and celebrities who are known to be big fans of the show.”

We like this idea, and we liked it when we first introduced it in reference to third party Twitter ads back in February. Which is not to suggest that Sacca plagiarized us, but rather to suggest that it’s such an obvious solution, Twitter would be foolish not to run with it.

Where Sacca trips up however, is in his suggestion on how to get people over their fear of public tweeting. His solution is to ask leading questions like ““Who influenced you the most growing up?”, asking users to comment on controversial articles, or, worse still, asking users to post pictures of their “goofiest ever Halloween costumer.”

And this is why Twitter is in trouble. Because anyone who understands human nature or user behavior (your pick) knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no one is going to respond to any of those suggestions, certainly not when their answers will appear in public. It’s hard enough to get people to respond when the only people seeing their responses are their friends (Facebook). People who regard the whole notion of publicly sharing their thoughts as frightening/ridiculous/egomaniacal are not going to start tweeting pictures of their Halloween costumes. Least of all their “most ridiculous” ones.

What Twitter needs to do is get over the notion that it’s a social network and embrace the notion that it’s a broadcast network. They need to start thinking about viewers, not users. Let the core users provide the content. And figure out a way for other people to see that content, in all its live and immediate glory, without having to sign up for a user account (a viewer account is another story) and/or feel like a loser when they realize they have nothing they want to tweet about.

Twitter is a great platform and we are big fans, but if it keeps trying to be Facebook Lite, it’s going to fail miserably. Double down on the broadcast, on the live, on the immediacy, lay off trying to get people to become “users” rather than “viewers”, and things (Twitter stock among them) may finally start to look up.

 Originally published at TV[R]EV on June 12, 2015

Introducing Whipclip, Your New Favorite 2nd Screen App

Originally published at 2nd Screen Society on March 26, 2015

While the industry may still be salivating over livestreaming in general and Meerkat in particular, a new app called Whipclip may well steal the thunder away from them. Designed to allow users to (legally) share high definition clips from current TV shows, WhipClip is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

The legal part is huge: Whipclip is partnering with a host of major TV networks, including ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, FOX, VH1, A+E Network, Lifetime, Bloomberg, OWN and Turner in order to launch the first legitimate TV clipping service.

It’s huge because not only are those networks making their programs available to Whipclippers, they’re actively working with the app to make previously aired shows searchable.

And therein lies the magic of Whipclip: Not only can you go in and find and edit a clip from a show you are currently watching, you can go in and search for a particular term or phrase or name from a sizable back catalog.

That means a user can go to the Bob’s Burgers page and search for “Tina” and turn up every scene featuring that character. Or they can get more specific and search for “Tina smells like ketchup” to turn up that particular scene.

The app serves up a one-minute clip, which the user can then edit down to 30 seconds using a very intuitive clipping tool. Searches can also be for real people, so that an actor’s manager can easily call up episodes of Late Night, Oprah and other shows the actor has appeared on and send them out to fans and/or interested production companies.

That’s pretty revolutionary, as Whipclips can be shared across a range of social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest (to start) as well as via email and text message, easily spreading the word to millions of fans.

The implications of all that sharing from a data perspective are tremendous: networks will be able to keep track of fans’ favorite moments in a show and understand which segments resonated with which demographic and on which platform.

In addition, they’ll be able to use Whipclip as a promotional vehicle, sending out the clips they want fans to share in the hopes of turning a popular moment into a meme.

Whipclip also works as a discovery tool, ranking the most shared moments so that users can easily see what everyone else is sharing. This feature then provides valuable data to the networks, who can use it to predict how well new shows are resonating with fans by the number of clips that wind up in the top lists.

The app launches today (Thursday, March 26th) in the App Store, and as part of the launch, Whipclip has partnered with Comedy Central and Justin Bieber so viewers can clip their favorite moments from the live broadcast of the “Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber” this, Monday, March 30 at 10 p.m. Whipclip users will be able to create customized clips of the #BieberRoast and then share them to their social networks, the first time a televised event has been shared in real-time.

Really ambitious users can also Meerkat themselves Whipclipping moments from the Bieber Roast for total Social Television Synergy.

We will be keeping our eye on this promising second screen app as it rolls out and reporting back on the unique ways fans and marketers are using it.

Meerkat Is TV's Next, Next Thing

Ever since Twitter “broke” at SXSW in 2007, industry observers have been looking for the new new thing, the technology that they can say “I was there first” about.

There haven’t been many wins on that front since 2007 (FourSquare and GroupMe both arguably had their moments in the sun) but that seems all but guaranteed to change this year, thanks to new live streaming start-up called Meerkat.

The output of a Bay Area company called Life on Air with roots in Israel, Meerkat allows users to livestream video directly from a Twitter feed. Launching the app calls up a screen that invites you to start streaming and then tweets the news of the livestream directly to Twitter.

That’s it: no editing, no special effects. And the stream is gone once it’s done: Meerkat just leaves a placeholder frame in place with the message that the stream is over. This Snapchattian feature is easily overcome, however, as Meerkat allows you to save the video to your iPhone (an Android version is coming soon) where you can upload it to YouTube, Facebook or, if it’s shorter than 30 seconds, Twitter.

All the usual suspects are playing with it and I suspect that almost every panel at SXSW will have someone Meerkatting it. In most cases, several someones. (Confession: I Meerkatted the last audience question of the panel I did at BBTVCON last week and was surprised to find I’d accumulated 10 viewers in just two minutes time.)

So what is the application of this new 2nd screen app for the television industry?

It can be a great driver of live tune-in, particularly for shows like news, sports and even talk shows, that are filmed live. Meerkat offers the ability to show off behind-the-scenes activity, uncensored, as it’s happening. It gives TV news crews the ability to stream what’s essentially raw footage from the scene of breaking events, along with their own commentary. It can even be used by scripted series to show off the cast and crew during a table read or similar meeting where the audience gets to see the cast in “unscripted” mode.

CNBC has already been experimenting with Meerkat, webcasting host Jim Kramer’s ringing of the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate his show “Mad Money’s” 10th anniversary.

 CNBC's Meerkat Stream

That’s exactly the type of use case Meerkat is good for. Smart network marketers will promote the webcasts ahead of time so that viewers will know when to be looking for them. And with Twitter’s new third party ad serving system in place, those Meerkat streams can be pushed out to additional sites and apps where users can engage with them.

Since Meerkat users need to sign in via Twitter, there’s a lot of data that can be gleaned from the app: who was watching, for how long, what are their demographics, have they engaged with the show previously, what else do they tweet about, what else do they follow.

While Meerkat will never be another Facebook (at least not with its current functionality) it’s a very well done value-add for Twitter, and showrunners and network marketing teams should definitely look into experimenting with it.

As for us, we’re keeping on eye on which shorthand emerges from SXSW this week. Will people be #Meering or will they be #Katting? We’ll keep you posted.

Originally published at www.2ndscreensociety.com on March 12, 2015. on March 12, 2015.

Social Media Turned Awards Season Into Newest American Holiday

Originally published at brief.promaxbda.org on February 25, 2015, co-written with BRaVe Ventures

It’s only a matter of time before Hallmark starts selling cards for it, but it looks like Awards Show Season is the newest American holiday.

And social media is to blame.

The confluence of fans, brands and the shows themselves have taken what were once minor spectacles and turned them into major celebrations. That’s been a boon for the events themselves as well as the brands smart enough to be associated with them.

And what started out as a handful of fans using Twitter to make snarky comments about Super Bowl commercials has turned into an eight week-long celebration of celebrity that takes place not just on Twitter, but on Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest and, more and more, Snapchat.

People now await the second-screen activity going on around these events as much as they anticipate the events themselves. That’s a huge sea change and about as close as we’ll get to proof that the Unified Screen world is here to stay. Brands and shows are creating not just cross-screen executions, but cross-screen story arcs that start before the show and end afterwards. (Another bit of fallout courtesy of social media: award shows used to be a one-day event. Now they eat up much of the week beforehand and a day or two afterwards.)

One positive result of all this inflation is that brands, shows and frequent social media users now realize they need to bring their creative A games, that social media is built on buzz and that the only way to get that buzz is to create something people want to talk about. Which is rarely (if ever) a canned marketing message.

That’s lead to some BRaVe executions this year, the most notable (in our humble opinion) being the four minute Imagine Dragons concert that Target pulled together for the Grammys, the first real example of branded content being used as a commercial. The spot was perfectly Targeted (pun intended) at the music-loving Grammys audience and by giving them something they wanted to see rather than more “me! me! me!” the brand (and the band) both garnered lots of social media love… all while getting their message across.

Not to mention that Target is now running pre-roll in front of the clip on YouTube directing people to buy the band’s new album at — where else? — Target.

From the Golden Globes to the Super Bowl to the Grammys to the Oscars (with Saturday Night Live’s 40th Anniversary special thrown in just to snark things up) this year has seen an increased use of platforms-that-aren’t-Twitter with positive results.

Justin Timberlake, Billy Crystal and Jimmy Fallon all appeared on SNL’s 40th Anniversary special.

Few people over 21 had even heard of Snapchat last year, but then BOOM this year it was all over the big events, with a sizable influx of dollars and creative energy as everyone was trying to reach its young millennial audience.

Last year too, Instagram and Facebook were barely calls to action and had no notable “real-time” plays that people could see. This year, both platforms had major calls to action and Instagram literally won the red carpet at a few of the events — the Golden Globes in particular, but Vanity Fair’s celebrity Instagram portraits by photographer Mark Seliger also made quite a splash.

 Oscar goes a little more classic, a little less glitzy with its Instagram celebrity portraits.

‘The Imitation Game’‘s Benedict Cumberbatch and ‘Cake’‘s Jennifer Aniston gave away a Golden Globe and then posed for Instagram pictures backstage.

And while there was no Ellen Selfie moment in this year’s Oscars — although everyone was certainly expecting it — Facebook still managed to pull in 58 million engagements on a night when Twitter’s numbers actually went down. (Not that it’s fair to look at Twitter’s numbers: things change so quickly it makes little sense to try and do year over end analysis. Rather than comparing apples to apples, you wind up comparing apples to a never ending fruit salad of platforms.)

The takeaway is that Awards Season gives us a unique opportunity to test out those platforms, each of which offers a unique way to reach a segment of the audience that’s tuned out of traditional interruptive advertising and is looking for entertainment, a bar that rises higher every year as audiences continue to look for bigger and better circuses.

More than just a celebration however, Awards Season 2015 has been an eight-week marathon of creative growth as well as a proving ground for the unified screen world that’s showing us why TV+Social+Digital will be the force that drives this industry into a “CreatedWith” revolution.

We’re in the middle of an unprecedented TV (r)evolution right now, so fasten your seatbelts and hang on for the ride

The Ellen Selfie And Other Oscar Dos and Don’ts

Ask someone what they remember about last year’s Oscar broadcast and the one thing they’re likely to spit back at you is the Ellen selfie. Or maybe they call it the Bradley Cooper selfie, or the celebrity selfie. The one thing they won’t be calling it though, is the Samsung selfie.

Which is a shame because it was Samsung who paid for and sponsored the shot.

Samsung is just the latest in a long line of brands who missed their close-ups, who paid to sponsor or promote something and wound up getting zero credit for it.

So how can you prevent this from happening to you?

Let’s look at the Samsung example first, for it contains some excellent lessons. Samsung gave Oscar MC Ellen DeGeneres a Samsung phone to carry with her during the telecast with the understanding she’d use it to take photos and viewers at home would be impressed that a celebrity like Ellen was using a Samsung Galaxy.

Big mistake.

While Samsung executives can no doubt recognize the difference between a Galaxy and an iPhone at 50 paces, the average consumer at home can not. Providing a close-up of the phone wouldn’t have helped much either — viewers would be too busy looking to see what apps Ellen had on her home screen to notice the logo. Chances are good most viewers assumed she was carrying an iPhone anyway. (The fact that she normally does carry an iPhone didn’t help that perception either.)

So what could Samsung have done differently?

This is one case where subtlety is a no-no. They should have had Ellen mention that she was taking photos with a Samsung Galaxy. Or at the very least included #Samsung as a hashtag. That way, what’s arguably the most famous piece of #CreatedWith content would have had some Samsung branding on it.

As we wend our way through this year’s award show season, we’ve already started to get a feel for this season’s winners and losers: Nationwide was a big loser during the Super Bowl after their home safety spot #NationwideDeadKid very quickly turned into the sort of meme brands fear most. Target on the other hand, was a winner for its four-minute Imagine Dragons concert during the Grammys, the first instance of branded content advertising.


Don’t want to be a loser? Here’s some do’s and don’ts on how to approach branded awards-show promotions:

— DO make sure there is some logical tie-in between your product and the event. If not, you’re going to want to create one because the only way people are going to listen to you is if they understand why you’re there. (HINT: “Because everyone else is” is not a good answer.)

— DON’T slap your logo on a promotion that has nothing to do with your brand . People won’t see your logo and they won’t know you’re behind it. And in the unlikely event they do see your logo, they won’t know why it’s up there.

— DO make sure that the promotion is relevant to the people watching the show. A hockey themed promotion may be part of who you are, but unless it’s going to resonate with the Oscar audience, don’t go there.

— DON’T do your own thing. If you’re piggybacking off of a show’s own promotion, don’t do your own (branded) version of it. The show’s version is fun and probably has a popular celebrity attached to it. Yours doesn’t. Guess who wins.

— DO be entertaining. While that sounds super obvious, we’re always amazed how often brands assume their strategic marketing position is so compelling audience will wait with baited breath to hear it. You’re running during an award show about the movies with every star in Hollywood. You’ve got to bring your A game or go home.

— DON’T be inorganic. Nobody likes a GMOP (genetically modified online promotion.) You want to strive to feel like a part of the program, not a bolted on side show.The more organic your promotion feels, the more likely it is to resonate with fans.

Originally published at brief.promaxbda.org on February 20, 2015

Who Needs Networks Anyway? Bringing Film and Television Directly To The Consumer

Originally published at tdgresearch.com on February 19, 2015

Eliminating the middleman has long been one of the tenets of the Internet revolution. While this formula has worked well in a range of industries from taxicabs (Uber) to lodging (Airbnb), it remains to be seen whether it can upend the conventional order of the entertainment industry.

There are a number of startups now banking on the notion that it’s more profitable for content producers to distribute their shows directly to consumers themselves, allowing them to keep the lion’s share of whatever advertising and/or subscription revenue they might earn.

Are they onto something? Maybe.

To begin with, let’s take a look at the core value proposition of what’s become known as “the sharing economy.” In established industries where the elimination of the middleman has worked very well, the sharing economy innovation solves a consumer problem, providing a service they’ve been unable to obtain elsewhere, such as reliable non-taxi taxi service or a safe and accountable way to use an apartment as a hotel room.

In the entertainment industry, eliminating the middleman solves a vendor problem, as content producers believe they are giving up too much of their profits to middlemen (in this case, the studios and networks). And while that may well be the case, it’s not something consumers particularly care about. They just want to watch their favorite programs.

From a consumer point of view, the television industry already has a (relatively) easy and widely accessible distribution system. While many feel it is overpriced, the new solutions aren’t promising to be any cheaper. The problem they are solving is that many content producers look at what networks and movie studios offer (distribution and marketing) and think, “I can do that myself, and make a lot more money doing so.”

Startups like Whalerock and VHX make it easy to find a reliable distribution platform. And marketing, many believe, can be handled for free, using social media. That, however, may prove to be a very dangerous assumption.

Too often I hear people expounding on how easy it is to use social media for promoting entertainment properties, pointing to Vine and YouTube stars (among others) as examples. While this is true for a small subset of performers, once you get past that subset, the premise falls apart.

People look to celebrities like Howard Stern as proof that using social media to drive buzz is a snap. What they forget is that in addition to over one million Twitter followers, Stern has millions of captive listeners via his Sirius radio show. The combination makes it easy for him to create buzz around his projects.

But few celebrities have those kinds of resources.

Social media is easy to use for marketing purposes if you have the time and the staff to run a proper campaign. A good social media marketing campaign is far more complicated than just issuing a tweet every other day. It’s a full time job, one that requires both a dedicated support team and the temperament to become a ceaseless self-promoter. For many celebrities that’s just not who they are, and if they ever decided to take that route, their fans would surely have a negative reaction.

But that Kardashian-esque compulsion for constant self-promotion is the only thing that’s going to deliver the sizeable audience they need. Without it, they’re better off sticking with the studios or networks.

This is not to say direct distribution by content creators is a total wipeout. It has worked very well for performers with dedicated followings. For example, comedian Louis CK is able to sell his specials directly to fans precisely because they are so loyal. Ditto for WWE, which enjoys millions of devoted fans and Twitter followers. Many music acts could probably achieve the same results, provided they have developed sufficiently large social media followings to market their performances.

Niche performers can also benefit from cutting out the middleman, provided they have an active social media fan base. Former Kodak CMO and Bloomberg TV personality Jeffrey Hayzlett was able to launch his own C-Suite Network, using his sizable social media following to create buzz for the show that runs on an OTT platform created by Piksel.

As live viewing numbers continue to decline, we can expect a greater number of content creators to explore the direct-to-consumer model. Of course, we will be surveying the landscape as this plays out, so stick with TDG and stay ahead of the curve.

Ready For It’s Close-Up: How 2nd Screen Is Going To Transform The Oscars

With the Oscars fast approaching, it’s interesting to think about what the show might look like once Twitter’s new third party ad system in place. That’s the newly announced system whereby Twitter is going to allow Tweets to be surfaced as native advertising on third party apps and sites.

Like the Super Bowl, the Oscars attracts a large global audience, and everyone is watching the show live, at the exact same time. As such, it’s one of the few events that still draws a real-time audience — even the Grammy’s were delayed for the West Coast this year.

The Oscars, even more so than other event shows, is made for social media. There are dozens of readily identifiable stars (with sizable social media followings) coming in on the red carpet and heading up to the stage to present and accept awards. There’s the host, Neil Patrick Harris, who has 13.7 million Twitter followers and 1.3 million Instagram followers.

There’s the fact that Twitter gave Harris the honor of producing the very first Twitter native video, a :30 promo for the Oscars that was shot with his phone’s camera. And of course there’s the world’s most famous selfie, the shot that Bradley Cooper took with Ellen DeGeneres that swiftly became the most retweeted photo ever.

Now let’s imagine that Twitter’s third party ad serving platform had been in place last year. That photo could have been served up (by Samsung, the company who sponsored the photo and by the Osars themselves) and pushed out to hundreds of major websites and mobile apps, along with a call to action to tune into the Oscars now.

I can only but imagine the amount of traffic that would have created, especially if it was part of a feed showing other key Oscar moments.

Which is another thing to remember: in addition to spontaneous moments like the selfie, the Oscars are chockablock full of what you might call “tweetable moments” as well known actors come on stage to receive their awards.

These can soon be syndicated, along with thirty second video clips and 140 characters of copy, to a variety of sites and apps where they can create the sort of buzz that helps to drive tune-in. (Especially if the tweets come with a compelling call to action.)

The real value of 2nd screen however, won’t be in the amount of tune-in those Twitter ads will drive. Rather, it will be in the data that the Oscars will be able to collect. They’ll be able to learn which skits created the most buzz and with whom, which ones drove the most tune-in and if there was a correlation between the two.

They’ll learn which sites and apps drove the most traffic, which demographics are responding to which segments, which messages attached to the same photo or video worked best.

They can use those findings for the next Oscars to build on and retain the current year’s audience. Determine which skits and jokes work best and which ones fell flat in order to guide next year’s script development.

The data will also help them sell advertising, as they’ll be able to give potential advertisers a clearer snapshot of who their viewers are and then offer them different opportunities by combining on screen and 2nd screen options.

That won’t be happening for the 2015 Oscars, but it’s something to think about as you’re watching: how much more powerful is 2nd screen going to be at next year’s show when Twitter’s third party site ad serving is in place.

Originally published at www.2ndscreensociety.com on February 19, 2015.

From Lost Remote: A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing: Jesse Redniss and Alan Wolk on Twitter's Latest (and Genius) Play

This piece, co-written with Jesse Redniss, first appeared on Adweek's Lost Remote site.

 Twitter’s recent deal to run sponsored tweets on third party sites like Flipboard and Yahoo Japan may have inadvertently solved one of the platforms biggest problems: while people like knowing “what’s on Twitter” they often don’t like using the platform itself.
As many observers have noted, no other social media platform gets the sort of viscerally negative reaction that Twitter does, especially from otherwise tolerant and tech friendly people. But while those same people may profess to “despise” Twitter, they are generally interested in what’s being said there. It’s the age old tale of a love/hate relationship, but now, consumers benefit the most by being on the receiving end of an experience that was once confusing and elusive.

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The 4S's of Second Screen

While much of the talk around second screen focuses on the content that users will create, that’s just the tip of the iceberg: most users don’t want to create content of any sort and are more than happy to let someone else do that for them. Someone else, in this instance being the people who create the actual shows, and/or the networks and the advertisers who pay to be on those networks.

In talking to all of the aforementioned stakeholders, we’ve come to the conclusion that second screen content can be broken out into four main buckets. Their weight in the second screen experience will vary from show to show, depending on factors like audience makeup and content type. The mix may even vary depending on when the viewer experiences it: before, during or after the program.

These four content buckets, which we’ve been calling the “4 S’s” are Social, Stories, Stats and Shopping.

Social is social media, which will play an increasingly shrinking role in the equation. While Twitter currently has a large install base compared to any dedicated second screen experience, it is nowhere near as ubiquitous as many advocates would have us believe: the majority of Americans are not on Twitter and are unlikely to ever join. Even among Twitter users, influence varies wildly depending on content: for every Oscar ceremony, there are 10 documentaries on History Channel no one is tweeting about. The waning popularity of live television makes any “of the moment” form of social media less relevant. Which is perhaps why a recent study showed that “only 1.5% of respondents report being drawn to TV viewing occasions because of social media.” Social will continue to be important for sports and other event programming that people like to watch live, but we see it’s current prominence rapidly diminishing.

Stories will become the most prominent second screen content for scripted programming. Stories, which will be created by the same people who create the show itself (with occasional help from avid fans) can be anything from “scenes from next week” to behind the scenes footage to interviews with the stars or producers to additional background on the characters. This content will generally be intended to be viewed either before or after the show-- not during it. It’s ideal for hardcore fans and for viewers who are bingeing on a show and want to catch up on the entire experience. The advantage for networks and advertisers is that this is the sort of content fans will return to long after the program airs live, thus prolonging exposure to the series itself and providing additional opportunities for both advertising and promotion of other network shows.

Stats are statistics, polls, voting and all other things number based. These will be particularly important for sports and reality game shows where viewer interaction is already part of the experience. Being able to touch the screen to manipulate stats and poll results and the like should prove to be a very engaging experience and this is one area where users will be able to take full advantage of their devices. As a result, stats should prove more popular during programming that is watched live than during scripted programming.

Shopping is T-commerce, which will generally happen after the viewer is done watching the show. Certain types of how-to shows (cooking and home improvement) may prove to be the exceptions, but given that many of those shows are, for all intents and purposes, 30 minute infomercials as it is, providing a vehicle for in-show t-commerce makes perfect sense. For scripted programming, however, it’s something that is likely to occur once the program is over and the viewer has time to focus on shopping, rather than cramming it in during a quick commercial break. If done correctly (watch our explanation of the “Ad Locker” concept) this will be part of a very lucrative second screen ad ecosystem.

Show runners will need to figure out what combination of the “4S’s” best suits the needs of their audience, and then tweak that content-- on a daily basis, if necessary. The goal of the content will be to drive tune-in, increase loyalty among hard core fans, promote future episodes and to serve as a platform for advertising and for the promotion of new network programming. (As live TV viewing decreases, networks will need to seek out alternate ways to promote their new shows. Second screen experiences for their existing shows should prove to be an effective medium.)

Vine's Dim Prospects

Vine, the new video microblogging service from Twitter (it allows users to post videos of 6 seconds or less) is an interesting idea, but I suspect it has too many fatal flaws both in the concept and in the execution, in order for it to take off in the time frame we’ve come to expect from overhyped technology.

Vine’s biggest initial hurdle-- the spate of bad publicity it’s getting from the fact that it’s taken over Chatroulette’s position as the Penis Network can easily be overcome by the institution of some stricter TOS policies and more active policing. But Vine’s problems run deeper.

To begin with, videos, even six second videos, are a big time investment. Psychologically, you need to make a commitment to watching a video. You can’t scan it the way you scan a page of text or even photos. That’s slightly less true with 6 second videos than with longer pieces, but it's still going to be a huge issue for Vine in the early days, when most of the videos are going to be banal experiments.

The other issue weighing against Vine is the learning curve. The traditional method of shooting and editing video is to overshoot and then edit: 60 seconds of video becomes 6. 

Vine is not set up that way. You can't edit, so you need to pick your 6 seconds carefully. It’s a skill and a challenge, more difficult than limiting messages to 140 characters (where you can always use abbreviations), more artistic than picking one of 10 photo filters.

That alone will prevent most people from using it: there’s no room in their already busy lives for yet another piece of technology, particularly one whose functionality is limited to artistic expression in a medium whose techniques are still not innately familiar the way photography is.

When adoption and use drop precipitously after the initial honeymoon stage (and they will) Vine will be branded a failure. Which is too bad, because it’s a fascinating concept and there are people who’ll see shooting video in six uneditable seconds as a challenge and they’ll start to create something interesting, a whole new video language if we’re lucky.

That may take a year of two to happen, which is forever in internet time. Let’s hope that Vine is able to hold on that long. Or if not Vine, then something a lot like it.
 

Creating A Two-Tier System of Customer Service

One of the things that often gets overlooked in the debate over whether companies should use Twitter for customer service and whether it’s just catering to the loudest whiners, is the difference between the types of people likely to be manning the corporate Twitter accounts and the corporate phone banks

The former are likely to be college graduates with an interest in marketing and social media who have a direct line to the powers that be. DItto the people tweeting them: they are likely to be more educated, more prominent and more savvy than your average consumer.

So is it fair to compare the relative value of the two until they’re more balanced? Right now, Twitter is a toy that marketers get to play with. Complaints that come in through Twitter are infrequent enough that the clever marketer makes a big deal about them, playing up what a great job they’re doing with customer service via Twitter, while ignoring the other 99% of their complainants, who are being sent to a call center in Bangalore.

It’s not a foolish move short-term: the company gets a lot of buzz for their excellent and caring responsiveness, people are impressed with their web-savvy, and points are scored all around.

The problem is when there’s no action taken as a result of the Twitter-based customer service. When what happens on the web turns out to be a Potemkin village, and the average customer is still treated to an inferior experience with no attempt made to improve it. That’s admittedly a cynical view of how many companies are using Twitter, but it’s likely an accurate one: too many companies are too busy listening to the people telling them to use Twitter and other social media to “listen” to their customers, but they are too busy or too distracted to actually take any action about what they're hearing

And that’s the thing: all the well-intentioned listening in the world won’t make a difference unless you fundamentally change the way your company does business and start respecting your customers and giving all of them a voice and a chance at a satisfactory experience. Creating a two-tier system, wherein well-connected social media mavens have their complaints treated by well-trained representatives with the power to take concrete action, while the hoi polloi deal with unempowered overseas phone voices with the power to do nothing more than apologize profusely is not the best way to take advantage of this new medium.

The Benefits of Real Time Search

I've admittedly always been a skeptic as to the value of real time search, e.g. including Twitter and (public) Facebook updates in Google and Bing results. My thought was always that if I wanted to search out what was happening in regards to a major news event, I'd do a full-on Twitter search from Twitter.com, rather than relying on a handful of results on Google.

But a recent event made me rethink that.

I had started to download the new iPhone OS4 to my 3G iPhone. As the hour-long back-up was starting, I had a vague recollection of reading that not all the new features would be available for 3G phones and decided to Google it to see what the story was.

Good thing I did.

The search results page showed a number of people retweeting an Engadget story warning of problems with the iOS4 upgrade on the 3G, along with an @ message from someone agreeing with their friend that their 3G phone now ran much slower.

Thus alerted, I did a full Twitter search, found that problems seemed to be the rule rather than the exception and aborted the upgrade (for now), thus saving me a considerable amount of hassle.

And proving the value of real-time search.

The Case For Amplify

I’ve become a big fan of Amplify, a new service that sits somewhere between a blog and Twitter. It’s just to the right of the space that Posterous and Tumblr own, but is focused more on words and ideas than on photos.

The set-up is pretty straightforward: you set up your own Amp Blog to which you can post either an entire URL or relevant clips of an article. The site allows you to simultaneously post to Twitter or Facebook, but the link goes back to your Amp Blog.

So why not just post directly to Twitter? Because Amplify lets you comment on the article you’ve just posted. In as many characters as you’d like. And it lets your friends provide threaded commentary as well. (Think del.icio.us with threaded commentary.) That’s a huge plus in terms of certain types of articles—Amplify is very big in the political community, so much of what gets posted and debated on there is actually fairly substantial (e.g. a far cry from “10 Ways To Use Location Based Services”) and the ability to share thoughts about things that don’t necessarily have to do with social media or marketing is a huge plus.

For me, Amplify has become the third place – not pertinent enough to the Toad Stool to devote an entire blog post to, but interesting enough to be worthy of more than 140 characters worth of debate. (You can, for the record, use Amplify to write posts from scratch and even microblog. But most users seem to use it to post and comment on existing articles.)

You can check out my AmpBlog at http://wolk.amplify.com/

PS: Sorry for the long delay between posts. A lot going on, but I have vowed to be more consistent moving forward.

Is Twitter Over?

While today’s New York Times describes Twitter’s growth chart as looking “like a hockey stick” I'm starting to wonder if we aren’t at the end of the line in terms of Twitter’s growth. Because four years into it, I can’t but think that the appeal of Twitter is largely based on personality and that the extroverts (and their fans) have already been converted.

Facebook, which in some ways is Twitter’s main competitor, is a lot less immediate and public than Twitter. Meaning that if I am an introvert, I can still put up pictures of my family, get back in touch with old friends, fan my kids school and play Scramble™ without feeling like I am “putting myself out there.” I don’t need to ever update my status, thus avoiding the question of “why would anyone care what I have to say and what do I care what they’re eating for breakfast?” (You can argue all you want about “useful information” and “fascinating feedback” but that is exactly how most unbelievers view Twittter.)

I would also not discount the rear guard action from location based services like FourSquare or Gowalla, which provide a more socially acceptable way of telling people where you are and what you’re doing.

Follow me on this one: with Twitter, you have to actively type in “Having coffee at Westville Mall Starbucks with @SocialBob and @JaneDoe” which, outside of The Bubble, sounds a whole lot like either bragging or oversharing. But if you check in with Foursquare or Gowalla then the apps themselves are doing the bragging for you - you’re just playing along and, if we buy into the hype, allowing friends of yours who are also at the Westville Mall to find you.

So it becomes a more socially acceptable way of announcing where you are and what you are doing-- particularly since the revenue model on LBS seems to be heading towards some sort of monetary reward for checking in (e.g. coupons) and you can’t fault people for wanting to save money. Additionally, people seem to be following a much tighter circle on the location based services due to privacy concerns, and so the assertion that the check-in is aimed at your actual real life friends actually has some validity.

Circling back to Facebook, I’ve started to see something interesting going on there too: people who do not use Twitter putting up status updates that resemble tweets in both their frequency, brevity and currency, but for the fact that they have nothing to do with anything work related. They’re all about movies, politics, restaurants, weather, kids, sports... all the stuff people outside The Bubble talk about. (As opposed to say, the Apple vs Google showdown.) What’s more, they’re getting a lot more feedback (in a threaded and easy-to-follow format) from people they actually know and whose opinions they tend to care about. 

And people like Facebook. Or at least they don't hate it the way so many seem to hate Twitter and everything it stands for. It's a puzzling reaction to a fairly innocuous platform, but it's out there.

Now I am in no way claiming Twitter is kaput or that’s going to implode. Just that it’s reached the natural point where it’s got to mutate significantly if it’s going to appeal to a broader group of users.

I can see Twitter easily becoming an indispensable adjunct to other types of web use, rather than its own unique platform. The ability to harness real-time search is pretty powerful, especially if you combine it with the new ad system Twitter is unveiling this week. Together they make it possible for me to see both the latest news about and offer from Starbucks. Which is useful and all, but not really a reason to get someone who’s resisted Twitter thus far to get out and start tweeting.

That’s why Twitter’s future seems to be as a platform where the many consume the output of the few. And while there will continue to be numerous subgroups who use the platform to network and connect with outsiders, the core proposition-- meet interesting strangers by putting your own thoughts. pictures and discoveries out there for others to find-- seems to have run its course. The extroverts are all signed up and the introverts.... well, they're just not interested.

Why You Probably Don't Need A Social Media Department

This started out as a reply to a post on AgencySpy about what ad agencies need to look for as they staff up their nascent social media departments and turned into a full-fledged blog post.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but my fear with creating a department specifically to oversee social media (rather than making social media a part of the overall marketing scheme) is that it then becomes yet another piece of what Brian Morrissey aptly calls the "matching luggage" and a passel of social media ideas get trotted out at every meeting alongside the TV spots and the print ads and the banners and the microsites and the iPhone apps whether the client needs them or not.

Smart agencies get that many clients don't need any kind of social media ideas.  Their products just aren't interesting enough to generate a whole lot of buzz and/or they don't have the budget or inclination to create any kind of buzz.

Many brands don't have the resources (e.g. time and money) necessary to properly maintain so much as a Facebook page (let alone an entire social media program) and you don't need to be a "guru" to know that having a Facebook page that gets updated once every three months is a lot worse than not having one at all.

But once you add a "social media department" to an agency’s roster, it becomes too easy for the agency to fall into the trap of expecting their new social media department to contribute something to every pitch or client presentation, even when it makes no sense.

Because otherwise what exactly are they paying them for, right?

Even worse will be those rare times when a heavy social media plan makes a lot of sense - brands for whom social media should be the bulk of their marketing effort - and the agency can't let that happen because that would be giving the social media department too much power and influence and so the politically expedient move is to trot out the matching luggage yet again.

Social media works when the client gets why they’re doing it and has practices and structures to support it. That’s a really important distinction that gets lost in the shuffle: Zappos (to use an easy example) is “good” at social media because they have really amazing customer service. Not the other way around. That’s why people talk about them-- because they’re impressed with the customer service, not because Zappos has a cool page with all their Twitter streams.

Hiring people to force clients who don’t get what’s needed to be successful in social media (better business practices, better products) to adopt social media programs that are doomed from inception is in no one’s best interest.

Interaction Burnout

It’s hard to believe it was only around two years ago that Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh started following and (more importantly talking to) people who mentioned Zappos on Twitter. This was more or less around the same time that Frank Eliason started tweeting for Comcast, talking up-- and calming down-- people who were having trouble with their service installers.

What followed was a mad rush to social media, where the goal was to obtain the level of seemingly effortless one-on-one interaction, brand love (and glowing press) Hsieh and Eliason were able to create for their respective brands.

And despite the fact that most brands are still in the consideration stage when it comes to social media, the brands that have dipped their toes into the water are already driving us towards something I’ll call “interaction burnout.”

To put that in human terms, imagine needing to have a full on conversation with everyone you met over the course of your day. Not just a “nice morning” or “looks like rain” exchange, but a full-on conversation with the gas station attendant, the dry cleaner, the security guard, the guy in the next cube.

Now imagine that almost every one of these conversations feels forced and stilted.

Because that’s what it feels like with so many brands. They all want to talk to you. Show you some pictures. Get you to play a game with them. And you know, we’re all pretty busy and there are only so many unnatural conversations we can have during the day. And so suddenly we’re wishing they’d just run a banner ad or a TV commercial and be done with it. Anything that we could just read or look at without having to stop to talk to them.

Much of this unnecessary patter is due to the unrealistic expectations brands (and the agencies and consultants that enable them) have for social media. Where, in a misguided quest for easily understood metrics, success has come to mean x number of Twitter followers or y number of Facebook Fan Page updates each month

Period.

Which basically recreates the old push media model, only with different media vehicles and ignores the presence (or lack thereof) of any actual interactions.

But there’s another side to all this I keep thinking about too. Which is that the early social media success stories happened because they were both unexpected and real. I mean most people were pretty shocked that the person tweeting as “Zappos CEO Tony” really was the actual CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh and not some behind-the-scenes PR person. The fact that Hsieh was actually  funny and had real personality only added to the mystique.

And that’s the thing: most companies don’t have a cool, funny CEO. Or one who is as comfortable being out there as Hsieh is. Brands, especially bigger ones, don’t really know how to have actual conversations (or their legal departments won't let them) so they resort to the sort of fake party banter (“Great! See you there!”) or plastic sales pitches (“Check out our new spring line!”) that only serve to make interaction painful.

We also expect them now. We’re not all that shocked when a brand follows us and then tweets offers at us. Or has a fun-filled Facebook page waiting for us to fan it. It’s kind of old hat and much as we like wasting time on Facebook, we don’t have time to interact with every single brand we like, especially if we’re mainly there to interact with our friends.

And, as we all know, Your Brand Is Not My Friend™.

So what to do?

Well, social media, to repeat one of my favorite mantras, is not a series of websites with no discernable revenue streams. It’s a behavior: the ability to interact with a site or application and have that interaction recorded, publicly, online.

And that behavior is not going away.

But rather than force consumers into awkward conversations or pseudo conversations, thus guaranteeing that they’ll do their best to avoid you, maybe the thing to do is just listen. To respond when appropriate and not try and butt into the conversation every four hours because it’s an easy way to justify a community manager’s salary or because you're paying your agency based on the number of tweets they issue.

We also need to realize that the same way most people don’t become the life of the party, not every brand is going to be a wiz at charming customers. And the solution to that isn’t to try and force them to be, but rather to accept that either:

1. You’re going to need to change and that means everyone in the company, not just the intern you hired to run the Twitter feed.
2. You need to find one particular area of social media you feel comfortable with - which might just be a blog or a YouTube channel -- and concentrate on being really, really good at that, especially if it makes sense in terms of who your customers are.
3. You may decide it’s not for you and stick to a 100% traditional paid push media plan. That’s not a great long-term strategy, but it’s a lot better than keeping up a really awkward and uninteresting social media program, thus contributing to interaction burnout.

I’ll leave you with this quote from a smart young guy named Matt Daniels “Marketing has a bell curve–most companies create average marketing and achieve average results.”

Why did we think social media was going to be any different?

What 'Thug Life' Can Teach Us About Twitter (new Ad Age column)

This ought to stir the pot up a little:

This Ignored Demographic Shows What You Can Learn When You Look Beyond Social-Media Elites

While most in the social media bubble would have you believe that Twitter's output consists solely of links to "relevant articles," "breaking news stories," "unique insights" or retweets of all three (along with the occasional "what I'm having for dinner" tweet from the latest Asian-Fusion-locavore bistro) a look at Twitter's Trending Topics reveals otherwise.

While the aforementioned geek patter is certainly in there, it's generally dwarfed on the trending topics list by tweets about Disney Channel stars the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus (put out, one can safely assume, by middle-school-aged females) and tweets from another demographic, twenty-something African-Americans tweeting in what can best be described as ghetto slang. (READ THE REST OVER AT AD AGE)

UPDATE, 2.10.10: The article got picked up by Gawker, where it sits amidst snarky posts on American Idol and Gossip Girl. (All press is good press though, right?)

The Art of Conversation

Conversation

People often talk about how Twitter is great at conversation, but the majority of folks I know rarely experience it as anything other than a one way street.

But sometimes a great conversation does happen, most often spontaneously.

The attached PDF is a loose transcript of a conversation that broke loose for about a half hour involving 18 people the other night based on a simple tweet I put out asking whether David Armano's accepting a position at Edelman said anything about the struggle between ad agencies and PR agencies for control of social media. (And since there was no hashtag involved, I'm sure I missed out on several side threads that took off.)

It took on several interesting tangents, and while I know most of the participants in real life, I did get to meet some new people as a result.

Which is why Twitter proves so addictive.

I Guess This Means We're For Real