Conquering the Smaller Screen: Twitter’s Impact on Television

This is a re-post of a guest article from Minni Kemp, originally published on a previous incarnation of this site. Having attended a Social Media Week panel on Social TV last week, I thought it about time to resurrect her observations on the rise of social media and its integration with our television experience. 

Minni Kemp is a Midwest freelance editor and writer. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, running, and reading cheesy romance novels. You can check out her writing at Professional Intern.

I admit that I’m addicted to Twitter.

It’s like the world’s largest custom-built chat room—and as long as you cultivate a good list of people to follow, Twitter can be loads of fun. For me, it’s the easiest way to keep up on what’s going on in the world; my timeline is a busy flow of tweets from friends, coworkers, journalists, and almost all of my favorite TV shows.

Even though I rely on my DVR for about half the TV shows I watch on a regular basis, there are a few shows I insist on watching live, just so I can watch with the other folks in my Twitter feed. The real-time conversations about certain shows are often just as good as the show itself.

Now that Twitter is becoming a part of mainstream media, television shows of all types are using Twitter as another way to interact with hardcore fans and to attract new ones.

The Vanishing Fourth Wall

For some shows, Twitter can carry the action and drama beyond the small screen. Twitter accounts often do more than just offer information about the show.

There are feed for a show’s fictional characters (like Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother and his @broslife account), for its actors (Neil Patrick Harris’s @ActuallyNPH), or even for a show’s production staff (@HIMYM_CBS). Giving fans a chance to interact with each other—as well as stars or show producers—can create an interactive and personalized television experience.

Absence Makes the Viewer Grow Fonder

Waiting for True Blood to return to HBO  sucked, but in a good way. With @truebloodhbo, the folks behind the show keep viewers hooked with contests and sneak peeks of the upcoming fourth season.

They’ve also used Twitter to build anticipation for the new season among diehard fans and Trubie newbies. For fans of the show, it’s become part of the True Blood experience—and it eases the pain until the show comes back on the air.

Community Service

Twittizens have created online communities to tweet about their TV shows in real time. And networks have taken notice: now, several shows offer Twitter feeds for their shows, featuring some of their favorite tweets onscreen during a first-run or rerun broadcast of a show. Using tweets written by real fans is a great form of advertising for a TV show, and is sure to be cheap and more effective than network commercials or e-mail marketing. The line between interaction and advertising continues to blur, but both fans and TV shows benefit.

For a genre that was once threatened by the rise of online entertainment, television has been quick to adapt and to use the Internet to its advantage.

With social media platforms like Twitter, television has become a collaborative experience. What the future of Twitter holds for more interactive television is still up in the air, but with tweeting becoming an integral part of watching TV, the future of entertainment could become more hands-on for viewers.

Your Two Cents:

Do you combine your television watching with tweeting? What does it add to your experience?

How do you see social media further developing and integrating with traditional broadcast media?

Your insights are what make the difference, so please weigh in below in the comments or over on Facebook.

Expect more on the social TV phenomenon as I delve deeper into the subjects of last week’s panel.