Generally speaking, there aren’t many things surpassing the popularity of entertainment television, in terms of consumption nowadays in the U.S. But when you think about it, there is one thing that just might rival it: mobile social networking. So what do you think happens when you mesh both of those elements together? Speakers from the “Future of Entertainment” panel at next year’s SXSW Interactive festival will be explaining just that.
Of the five speakers set to participate in this session, three will focus on the social media aspect of this discussion: Jared Hecht, of GroupMe; Kimber Myers, of GetGlue; and Tom Thai, of Bluefin Labs. The remaining two participants, Mike Scogin of MTV Networks and Paul Chang of Showtime, will speak about the entertainment television aspect of the panel.
GroupMe is a social media application that focuses on collectivism. This application focuses overall on connecting its users with multiple others, instantly. The prominent features of this app are group messaging and conference calling. The application also offers its potential consumers a free number from which to message the members of its chosen social circle. According to Tech Crunch, the company was acquired by social and video messaging giant Skype in August of this year.
The social media company GetGlue is already in the entertainment lane, in terms of mobile networking. This application tailors to the social media audience that is interested in check-ins, but alters this element to apply to what the user is watching, reading, or listening to, rather than physical or geographic check-ins. GetGlue’s primary focus centers on television events, whether they be sporting events, prime time shows, or any other category of television entertainment. GetGlue representative Kimber Myers explained the concept of the GetGlue company, and how users are, and potential users can, apply and incorporate the social media application to their lives.
“People are looking for new ways to connect to their favorite shows on TV, as well as [to] other people who are watching them,” Myers said. “The growing prevalence of smart phones and tablets is making this a seamless experience for viewers.”
Bluefin Labs is a different sort of social media tool, in the sense that it focuses more on the statistics related to social media consumption. In a very unique approach, Bluefin Labs analyzes how consumers respond to television. The elements of this analytics tool range from “response level,” which measures the number of commenters for any given episode of a show, to “response share,” which is described as the percentage of a program’s share of social response within a specific part of the day. The results gathered from the Signals analyses are available to audiences such as programmers, marketers and buyers in order to enable them to better understand the meaning behind the numbers, and apply that knowledge to the television market.
MTV Networks and Showtime are relatively well known forces in the entertainment industry. The representatives (Scogin and Chang, respectively) of these companies will factor into the panel discussion by offering the perspective of how entertainment networks are adjusting to the upsurge in social media usage, and how this influx is influencing the entertainment field to integrate social media elements into the the television genre.
GetGlue panelist Myers believes that this session as a whole can factor into the SXSW experience for attendees of this particular panel.
“Attendees of SXSW have traditionally been ahead of the curve where tech is concerned, and social TV continues to be an emerging, growing field for people to enter,” Myers said.
