Twitter

Simon Dumenco: “For my money, where it gets really interesting is when networks stop thinking about how to goose the social-media numbers surrounding the broadcast window and instead think of their shows as cross-platform brands that fans want to be able to engage with anytime they want…. In other words, social TV ends up doing what social media in general has done: It gets absorbed into daily life. It stops being this separate thing.”

It looks like networks may have some new, unexpected inventory to sell: their Twitter feeds. The Associated Press and Samsung appear to have established a template this week, where a network could place ads atop their own pages as well as feeds for individual shows, which would seem to be more coveted by advertisers.

The ratings company and the social media network have inked a multiyear agreement to deliver a syndicated-standard metric based on the reach of the TV conversation on Twitter.

Like any good, creative trend, the hashtag phenomenon has now gone overboard. Helpful at first, those little # signs with a relevant word in the corner of the screen — the Twitter-friendly handle for a show or topic — now risk becoming an irritant. Hashtags are cluttering primetime, having migrated from our Twitter feeds to TV.

Nielsen says that one in three people using Twitter in June sent messages at some point about the content of television shows, an increase of 27% from only five months earlier. And that was before the Olympics, which was probably the first big event to illustrate the extent of second screen usage.

Comments about his on-air flubs at the Thanksgiving Day parade follow criticism about the removal of Ann Curry from Today. “They have an opinion and two thumbs, and that gives them the right to do whatever they want,” he said.

If Twitter ends up running its own video service, this should help: The messaging service has bought Vine, a video-sharing start-up.

The online Twitter complaints at #nbcfail focused Saturday on NBC’s decision to air the marquee swimming event won by American Ryan Lochte on tape delay in primetime, and Friday on the network not streaming the opening ceremony online. Sunday’s critics started early: people wondering why the U.S. men’s basketball team’s opening game aired on a cable network while women’s cycling was shown on NBC.

The social media company, along with multiple Hollywood producers and network executives, are in serious talks about the possibility of launching several original video series via Twitter.

As athletes parade into London’s Olympic Stadium this Friday, Twitter Inc.’s Olympic hopes will play out in a spartan office in Boulder, Colo. There, a handful of people will spend 20 hours a day to help corral millions of Twitter messages from Olympic athletes, their families, fans and NBC television personalities into a single page on Twitter.com. NBC will promote the website with on-air promotions and links to athlete interviews or video clips.

Twitter has hired veteran TV executive Fred Graver to lead efforts striking partnerships in the TV business.

Twitter Inc. aired its first TV ads to promote its advertising potential on Sunday during a Nascar broadcast on Time Warner’s TNT. The ads, produced as part of a partnership between Twitter and Nascar, come as the six-year old micro-blogging service seeks to establish itself as a serious social media business.

NPR’s Andy Carvin on Twitter as a newsroom: “I get uncomfortable when people…[see] my Twitter feed as a newswire. It’s not a newswire. It’s a newsroom. It’s where I’m trying to separate fact from fiction, interacting with people. That’s a newsroom.”

At ESPN’s upfront presentation today, the sports network announced a strategic relationship with Twitter to co-produce unique social experiences around larger sports events. Advertisers will be able to buy into both ESPN’s properties and the Twitter components in a single integrated buy.

While The Bachelorette‘s Emily Maynard is busy finding a husband, Seattle’s KOMO will be using Twitter to find a new source of ratings for its primetime programming. The ABC affiliate is all-in with an idea to get Seattleites tweeting about the reality show’s premier. It’s something they hope will create buzz and in turn, ratings.

Bitly, the URL shortener of choice for most people, has analyzed its click-tracking data to find the optimal days and times for posting links to social media. The results show interesting, distinct patterns among Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

Panelists at an NAB session debate the finer points of the value and influence of Twitter, Facebook et al., but a consensus was clear: It’s hard to overestimate social media’s impact on politics. For all that’s going on at NAB 2012, click here.

The new tools allow local media sites to add relavant social media content from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube below their own content and integrate weather content from Weather Central.

The ABC owned-and-operated station has the largest like/follower count across both Facebook (344K) and Twitter (78K) of any TV station in the country and the first time any TV station tops both the Facebook and Twitter list.

An erroneous tweet by a student newspaper was amplified by media organizations across the country and retweeted uncounted times. The incorrect information found its way onto media websites, including CBSSports.com, People.com, The Wrap and the Huffington Post.

Networks large and small are using social media to engage second-screen viewers like never before. Integrating social media from viewers following along with computers and smartphones fosters greater engagement while also broadening the audience for programming. Best of all, it provides consumer data. The question now is not whether networks should utilize social media but how they can use it most effectively and monetize it.

At the next Republican presidential primary debate tonight, Fox News will be measuring viewers’ reactions to each answer on Twitter, the social Website that acts as an online water cooler during big television events.

While an earlier Nielsen study found that social buzz can impact ratings weeks in advance, a new study from the ratings company shows that Twitter’s biggest impact is closest to airtime.

For nearly every news organization, Twitter has become a regular part of the daily news outreach. But there are questions about how those organizations actually use the technology: How often do they tweet? What kind of news do they distribute? To what extent is Twitter used as a new reporting tool or as a mechanism for gathering insights from followers? Here are some answers.

USC’s Robert Hernandez has emerged as a social media guru, advising journalists and media companies on how to mine and manage this increasingly important audience engagement tool. Companies that ignore Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and other social media outlets face a dim future, he says.