Back in October I asked the question here about whether watching TV is a social experience. The context of that question was directed at CBS and their launch of social viewing rooms for online video. We haven’t heard much about that feature in a while and my guess is that it has faded quietly into the background if not completely removed from the site. The fact is that replays of scripted online video are not social activities. By the time most viewers are watching online (assuming they’re watching legally), the conversation is not real time and generally involves plot discussions and what’s coming next.
But live TV is a bit different…especially for major events like the Presidential Inaugurations, the Academy Awards, and possibly sports. The success of the Facebook/CNN Inauguration partnership has been widely reported as being very successful. And according to MediaWeek, 11% of Oscar viewers were online while viewing live TV - and using Facebook and Twitter to discuss the program.
So that begs the question of whether TV events have to be LIVE to generate real-time social interaction, or whether scripted shows can be equally successful as a real-time social experience. Our assumption has always been that users want to discuss the episode after it’s over rather than as they’re watching it. That’s the whole reason we chose Watercooler as the company name since most of the discussion within our Facebook applications are similar to things you would talk to officemates about at the watercooler the next day.
However, live discussion is also very valuable especially since it’s probably quite attractive to broadcasters and advertisers. Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee opines that enhanced social interaction around real-time broadcast TV could be a good way to prevent viewers from tuning out or changing channels during commercial breaks. He also points out that using pre-existing online affinity communities could be the perfect group to tap into for that purpose. Look no further than our 17 million TV fans in our TVLoop community on Facebook. To help drive some of that episode-centric behavior, we’ll be making some product changes in the future to more effectively drive interaction around each new episode. If we’re successful, we should have a much easier time pitching sponsorhip opportunities to broadcasters and advertisers alike.
[...] has been a lot of chatter across the blogosphere this week about socializing around TV. Most of it began when Hulu announced that it was adding a variety of social features so that [...]