asi: Facebook and Google’s growing significance in social TV & research

This years asi European TV Symposium held in Amsterdam opened the doors to Facebook and Google for the first time, recognising their growing significance in social TV and in TV research.

Facebook’s Tony Evans delivered some eye-opening stats – as Facebook is often capable of doing – but disappointed a little as he failed to build thoughts around strategies or implications on these.

Evans spoke of the “collaboration” between TV and Facebook. 17 of the top 100 most-liked positions on Facebook are occupied by TV shows – Top Gear comes in at 8.9 million now – and Channel 4’s early research into which programmes stimulate most conversation has acknowledged that the bulk of these take place in Facebook.

Evans also pointed towards the start of EPG integration, with Comcast in the US, and now zeebox – which has the highest profile of many in the UK market.

Earlier the conference heard from Peter MacAvock, programme director of the European Broadcasting Union, that the life of a TV set was now just 4.5 years – where it had been 12 not so long ago.

If that was sweet music for the CE businesses, MacAvock was less enamoured of the over complicated user interfaces of smart TVs. He suggested connection rates for connected TVs were up to 50% when the set came with integrated wireless, but as low as 15% without.