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The ‘second screen’ is an integral part of life…

August 18, 2011 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

I happened to watch the excellent Concrete Circus on Monday whilst staying with my parents (It’s available via 4OD at the moment). It’s a great programme about five amazingly talented urban sports stars attempting to make their latest and greatest videos, and heavily references the audience they’ve attracted by sharing their athletecism on Youtube.

I’ve always been a fan of urban sports (skateboarding, urban trials, parkour and BMW in this example), and for once the description of ‘jaw dropping action’ is pretty true. But I was also a little surprised when I suddenly realised the difference apparent across the living room.

My dad was sat engrossed in the action in his chair, occasionally chatting to me about what was on screen. At the same time, I’m sat with my laptop, sharing some thoughts on Twitter and also picking up on each mention of the Youtube clips which made each athlete famous, and saving each one to watch later. It wasn’t that I was using my laptop whilst watching TV – it was the fact that it was so natural that I didn’t even acknowledge it was out of the ordinary until my parents mentioned it after around 30 minutes or so.

Incidentally, having already seen videos of Danny McAskill and Kilian Martin, it was the parkour that amazed me the most, e.g.:

What I started wondering was whether it’s right to call the PC or iPad the ‘second screen’ as TV broadcasters and most media firms would have us believe. Or is it actually that the TV now occupies a similar spot in many ways to radio, in which we’ll have it on, but only pay attention when something grabs us. If I looked at my Twitter usage on a Sunday, I would guess that it builds for about 30 minutes before each MotoGP race, stops for 50 minutes while the race is happening, and then kicks off after the finish, as I mix the pre and post-race interviews and commentary with my thoughts and reactions, and those of my friends and peers.

And mobile is bringing this out with us, whether it’s the likes of QR Codes and Augmented Reality, or even something as simple as Google search. At the National Space Museum recently, I came across some information about astronomer Tyhco Brahe, and found the name familiar for some reason. Within seconds I’d realised it was from online comic Penny Arcade, and confirmed it via Wikipedia. And again, whilst watching Exit Through The Gift Shop, I ended up researching elements of the programme for friends whilst watching it.

What’s interesting is that in all of these occasions, the computer/mobile usage was part prompted through my own desire for knowledge, and mainly prompted by the social aspects of being able to answer questions/provide context and sharing the knowledge I had access to. Plus there was a strong element of fact checking with a little error correction as well!

Given the value humans put of social activity as a species, it’s not only the interactive screen which should probably be denoted as the ‘first screen’, but it’s becoming vital that whatever you’re doing to get the attention of people, whether via broadcast media, or in a museum, you need to be aware of how to accomodate the ‘first screen’, or be able to successfully compete with it (a riskier strategy unless you can jump over buildings etc).

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Filed Under: Digital Audio, Digital Television Tagged With: broadcast, integration, interaction, mobile, second screen, tv

Twitter traffic overtakes mainstream news

May 13, 2009 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Twitter website traffic has overtaken both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for April 2009, as picked up by PaidContent and expanded on by ReadWriteWeb.

Which is a handy stat, but….

Are we really comparing like for like, or is this as misleading as comparing print and online figures?

For starters, we’re looking at website traffic, and although publication has numerous ways to be accessed online, I’d risk assuming that Twitter’s proportion of mobile and desktop client access is greater than that of the newspaper sites – which probably means the numbers went past the paper sites long ago.

And where’s the measures of interaction for comparison? While not every Twitter user is interacting, and newspaper sites are building in increasing routes to conversations and communities, surely it’s the engagement, interaction and effectiveness of Twitter versus other sites which is of as much importance? Even when it’s breaking news, e.g. Mumbai, the ability to converse with both the source and others is built into Twitter to a far greater extent than the paper sites.

Finally for a comparison – what amount of data is being generated by the different sites?

That’s surely of major importance considering the changes happening in general searching:

First hands on test with Wolfram Alpha

Google search tools moving closer to ‘real-time’

And considering the current wave of new and improved Twitter search tools:

Scoopler

Twitscoop

Tweetmeme

Oh, and major changes to Twitter Search itself.

Whether or not the current buzz and celebrity/mainstream adoption continues, or whether a backlash increases along with the pretty high drop-out rate from people trying Twitter for the first time, it’s the levels of data and engagement which are key to the longterm success, and routes to monetization for Twitter, rather than sheer mass audience numbers. Particularly when the types of both advertiser and advertising which are going to be most effective will also be quite different from traditional publishing outlets.

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Filed Under: twitter Tagged With: comparison, data, engagement, figures, interaction, new york times, scoopler, search, statistics, traffic, tweetmeme, twitscoop, twitter, wall street journal

Isreali Consulate using Twitter for Press Conference on Gaza

December 30, 2008 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

Just spotted that the Israeli Consulate is using Twitter for a press conference on Gaza attacks.

Spotted via Doc Searls.

More information, here.

Really interesting example of how politics and world events are intertwining with what some people still see as a niche networking platform – but one which in my opinion radically changes the dissemination and interaction with information.

I wonder how international diplomacy may change with UK, U.S and Canadian politicians already in evidence. For instance, UK ministers on Tweetminister, US Congresspeople on TweetCongress, and the same opportunities and tools for collaboration and interaction which individuals and businesses are already able to benefit from?

Update: @rafaelprince has a log of the conference here.

Update 2: It’s also inspired a great post by Laura Fitton on ‘Microsharing as Humanitarian Act‘ – well worth reading.

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Filed Under: Microblogging, twitter Tagged With: collaboration, doc searls, gaza, information, interaction, israeli consulate, politics, press conference, tweetcongress, tweetminister, twitter

Breaking the habit of broadcast media

October 21, 2008 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

UK newspapers by franckdethier on Flickr (CC Licence)

It’s only when you try and break a long held habit that you realise how much we’re all influenced by the way we’ve always done things. Since starting my efforts to cut down and stop smoking, I’ve managed to get to the point where I only have the occasional cigarette once the family has gone to bed – but it’s the hardest one to drop. And when I get writers block, my intake rapdily goes up because I’ve spent so long finding inspiration by getting outside and getting the hit of nicotine while my brain kicks into gear.

And I’ve also started to try and challenge the broadcast media habit of trying to get the biggest audience with the least work. For years we’ve focused on audience figures to suggest that by doing the bare minimum, you’ll reach the biggest audience.

Whereas in the modern world, we need to work harder than ever at making as much of what we do remarkable, and to pursue as many opportunities to the maximum as we can. Otherwise we’ll keep finding someone else that does!

It reminds me of a post I read earlier today, which sadly I seem to have misplaced, commenting on the problem facing the A-List of blogging. Namely, the fact that people like Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk are finding it hard to scale to respond on an individual level to every email, post and tweet they receive, and in effect, become mini-broadcasters.

The simple answer is that they still remain increasingly popular because they put in a huge amount of effort to stay more accessible than mainstream media. They don’t have to make time for everyone, but by attempting it as far as possible, it gives hope to those who don’t grab their attention at a particular time. It’s why I count myself fortunate to have had messages from the likes of Chris Anderson and Hugh McLeod, but I don’t bombard them with emails, or suddenly thinkg they’re my best friend and will respond to everything I do – they’ll do it if what I say is interesting and they have the time available.

The other option is to scale it, and for them to find someone as similar as possible, or someone they can trust, to work alongside them.

That’s where broadcast media should be. We still have far more resources than the top bloggers, so why not scale back on the coverage that everyone else is parroting, use link journalism, and focus on becoming closer to the spirit of individual response that blogging has fostered.

After all, it’s what we laud Zappos, Dell and Comcast for doing.

But there is a habit of resisting the idea of putting in that much effort for what will be less profit in total. Despite the fact that everything so far has shown that it’s harder to get similar levels of profit from online audiences as you would in print, radio or TV, and that the only way to really be successful is to aggregate lots and lots of individuals monetisation.

Annoyingly, the great David Armano summed this up far more succinctly.

The Corporate Social Media Curve by David Armano (http://darmano.typepad.com/)

At the point before the curve starts to dip, we need to put in the extra effort to keep that line climbing. Now if only I hadn’t needed a cigarette to think of all this!

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