Through our social media consulting work for our client SKY (Germany’s biggest PayTV channel), the ideal linking of social media and TV has come to be a focus of our company’s in-house research. One of the conclusions from our strategic deliberations is that Social TV will be THE next trend in TV for the next 5 years.
Why? Because all 3 key protagonists of this industry are already developing in this direction independently of each other:

1. Manufacturers of TV devices already include “social widgets” in their products – this means that TV applications allow for performing actions like social sharing on Twitter or Facebook directly from the TV user interface.
2. International channels like CNN and sports associations like the NBA are already creating innovative links between the social media and TV by overlying Twitter hashtags on the show or providing visuals of the social buzz on a topic or sporting event.
3. TV viewers around the world are already using social media and TV simultaneously: 80%(!) of smartphone users use their devices while watching programmes on TV. Use of social networks is the most popular activity.

These multifarious developments and the particularly rapid spread of social media among younger sections of the population will fundamentally change TV-related usage behaviour: away from passive leaning-back-and-relaxing towards multitasking and the social layer overlying the TV programme itself – though it still remains to be seen on which device this will ultimately take place (One Device vs. Multi Device).

(Image by J▲hn Steven – flickr creative commons)