Software Outfit Aims To Turn Tweets Into Audiences

PREMIUM: The shows creating the most buzz on Twitter are not necessarily the ones with the biggest ratings, Tom Weiss, the founder of TV Genius, a U.K. company which specializes in converting tweets into viewer eyeballs, tells Jay Stuart.

London-based software provider TV Genius has found that there is no direct correlation between social-media traffic and ratings performance. “Some shows with big ratings do not create high engagement in social media,” Weiss told World Screen. “And some shows that are big in social media don’t have high ratings.”

An example is ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent, which ranked only number 141 in the ratings for the week ending April 24, but was way up at number six among the top tweeted shows. Likewise, ITV2’s The Only Way Is Essex ranked 102nd in the TV ratings but was fourth in tweets. Animation import Family Guy from FOX on BBC Three ranked number 144 in the ratings but was tenth in Twitter terms.

There are shows that are strong both in the ratings and on Twitter. For example, BBC’s EastEnders and Doctor Who rank in the top five in both.

“When people are engaged with something on social media that means it’s relevant to them and our business is to make television programs more relevant,” said Weiss, who defines TV Genius as a “content discovery platform.”

Social media do not drive viewing so much as reflect what people are watching. TV Genius provides the next step. The software platform which it licenses to broadcasters tracks the social-media activity and provides tools for them to encourage viewers to watch their shows.

For example, when a show is being tweeted about a lot, the Twitter logo can be made to come up in real time on the EPG (TV Genius is doing this through the Amino set-top box). The new Twitter Analytics solution enables companies to use Twitter to drive uptake of video-on-demand content or build Facebook apps that let users interact with their friends, or create an interactive social TV guide based on what viewers are tweeting about.

Weiss, formerly a senior T-Mobile exec, started TV Genius about six years ago. The company’s clients use its software in different ways. Sky, for example, has focused on adapting it for search functionality, while Freeview has developed mobile uses.

According to TV Genius marketing head Emma Wells, behaviour on Twitter differs substantially from Facebook or Google’s social-networking site Orkut. “Essentially a lot of the data on Facebook is private, while on Twitter nearly everything is public. People are tweeting because they want to share not just with their friends, but with the world. This means that Twitter lets us see what shows are generating high amounts of conversation, and recommend the hottest trending shows in real-time.”

People on Facebook might mention a show once an evening, but they are unlikely to chatter continuously about a show while they watch it, which is commonly the case on Twitter.

The next phase for TV Genius may involve Facebook. The company sees “serious potential” for linking TV and Facebook, according to Wells, but behaviour on Facebook differs from Twitter too much to make a one-size-fits-all solution.