Perkolating

ESPN and Twitter are announcing a major expansion of their collaboration to post sports-related videos on the short-messaging service—part of a growing wave of tie-ups as TV networks and Twitter hunt for new advertising revenue.

The Carr-Benkler wager, seven years later.

Twitter has landed its biggest advertising deal to date, reaching a first-of-its-kind agreement with Publicis’ Starcom MediaVest Group worth hundreds of millions of dollars over a multiyear period, according to people familiar with the matter. The

HUGE.

If a rumored music service wasn’t enough to push Twitter into the territory media, now the company might be trying to get TV content playing through the service.

The big question for many brands when it comes to social media is how does it affect the bottom line? Twitter provided an answer to that question yesterday as it released a study showing how tweets drive sales. | Marketing Magazine

via Nieman Journalism Lab by Daniel Victor

“Does this mean the millions of Twitter users who deploy such hashtags to increase their reach are all wrong? Well…yes. We certainly have a history of carrying out myths in technology. Shaking a Polaroid picture didn’t make it develop any faster. Blowing on Nintendo cartridges didn’t help, either. We’ve all been told at some point that hashtags connect you to more people, and it’s been widely accepted as fact.”

Fantastic post by NYT Social Media editor Daniel Victor on the truth behind the hashtag myth. While on occasion, a small group using a hashtag can be useful, on the whole, the hashtag just creates social noise. 

via Lost Remote by Cory Bergman

We’re starting to see some of the early products, and as is customary with Twitter, we’re seeing it first with an API partner. TBG Digital was given an early run at the adverting API, and this week it announced a new product called “Calendar Live” which gives marketers the ability to buy Promoted Tweets in sync with TV shows. While marketers could already do this manually — for example, buying tweets against show-related hashtags and scheduling them around the show’s airtime — TBG Digital has compressed it into an easy-to-use tool with more granular time-targeting abilities and trend monitoring.

via Harvard Business Review by Deb Roy

“We are witnessing the creation of a fundamentally new mode of human communication. One-way broadcast TV has been augmented with millions of real-time audience feedback signals that are shaping audience decisions of what to watch and how to interpret what they see. This new force promises to redefine how political campaigns of the future will be won, how marketers will sell, and over time this mass-interactive medium will give rise to new forms of news and entertainment.”

Brilliant post from Bluefin Labs co-founder.

via WindMill Marketing by Chris Treadaway

…And according to Mashable, it (Facebook) had roughly an 8-to-1 advantage over Twitter in terms ofOscar 2013 social interactions.  So why is Twitter the alleged #1 social network for live events?  A few reasons:

1. Edgerank — News Feed real estate is and remains to be cherished by Facebook Users.
2. Shelf life of a Tweet vs. Facebook Status Update — Tweets come & go during live events. Wait a second, and your screen is replaced with another dozen tweets or more depending on how many people you follow.
3. Virality — Say something clever on Twitter, and millions of people might be exposed to it.  That isn’t really possible on Facebook.
4. Discoverability — Social chatter takes place on Facebook, but is happening on Users’ Profiles, Pages, and to a lesser extent in Groups. Twitter’s simplicity makes the chatter there appear to be more “alive”.
5. Decorum — Facebook has emerged as the place for being careful about what you share. It has become our lifestream, a record of our lives.  Twitter on the other hand is the record of our reactions. Twitter is where you let loose.

Here’s why the second screen industry will ultimately succeed:

• Usage is growing rapidly:85% of smartphone users reported second screen-linked behavior at least once a month, over 60% reported doing it on a weekly basis, and 39% did so daily. Over 80% of 18- to 24-year-olds told Pew they used their phone while watching TV, and 60% of Americans with annual incomes above $50,000 use their phones while watching TV.
• And mass acceptance isn’t even necessary: All that matters is that a significant minority of viewers develop this habit (especially if they are highly engaged viewers). In the U.S. alone, TV ad spending was $18.4 billion in the third quarter of last year, a $74 billion annual run rate. If mobile can carve out even a small share of that pile of dollars via second screen channels, it would boost the mobile industry tremendously.
• Second screen isn’t really a new activity: It’s a natural update to the old ways of engaging with TV, like the old office water cooler conversations about last night’s football game or popular TV drama. Moreover, second screen-type behaviors were already popular on desktops and laptops, before mobile came along and made it a lot easier to participate. 
• Second screen apps and sites are bridges: They bring together the powerful but increasingly fragmented world of television media, and the fast-growing but still undeveloped digital realm. For TV-centric advertisers and content producers, second screen provides a channel through which to test out digital strategies while still remaining tied to familiar territory.

Twitter has acquired Bluefin Labs, a social TV analytics company that was founded in 2008, sources say.

Although we don’t know the exact acquisition price, we were told this is Twitter’s biggest acquisition to date. 

(Presumably these sources were excluding Twitter’s early stock aquisition of Summize, which would now be worth ~$800 million.)

HUGE news.