TV companies like ABC and NBC are always looking for ways to improve viewer ratings, viewers themselves to watch TV, and to create enhanced services based around TV shows. We've already seen this with Facebook applications like Addicted to Lost around the ABC's hit TV show Lost and Warner Brothers' move using Facebook on their TheWB.com network. Now, NBC is using the Beijing Olympics as a testbed for research into social media to determine which sports viewers like to watch and to provide a "comprehensive picture of how people are supplementing TV viewership with tools such as video streaming, video on demand and mobile phones" (Alan Wurtzel, NBC's research chief). They are also giving online surveys to viewers to guage their feedback and even giving special programmed cell phones to look at viewer behaviour when away from the TV watching the Olympics.
I think it's about time that TV began to use social media and integrate it with their own TV offerings. There needs to be more value add in TV, it needs to be a more social experience. This reminds me of a research project from PARC called SocialTV. You can also read a previous blog post I wrote about this.
On Technorati: Olympics2008, social media, TV
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