Darren Waters on Social TV

I don’t remember the first time I used the term social TV, but it’s definitely in vogue at last:

[from BBC NEWS | dot.life | A blog about technology from BBC News | TV becomes social again]

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 share links to sites with backstory, or explainers etc.

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 Tweetscan 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 followed in real time.

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

I am not in favor of TV, but anything is better if made more social.