Amongst the many novelties, technological and not, which Sky has introduced in its first “satellite” edition of X Factor, the Dual Screen is innovative and revolutionary in the television arena. The project, has been conducted in collaboration with HyperTV, provider of eXperience Second Screen, the online platform to design and publish user experience synchronized with television shows.

HyperTV is able to create synergy between TV and mobile employing thanks to its event driven platform and to a few bits injected in the audio track of the show. Taken from the press release, Remo Tebaldi, the executive producer of X Factor and Sky said:

“Content technology has always been one of the principal assets for Sky, and this interesting test is a further proof. We are amazed with the results and the comments we received by our subscribers, and are considering how to apply this experience to other contents. We thank Hyper TV for all the efforts put towards making this important test happen.”

Claudio Vaccarella CEO of Hypertv said: “

The experience we had with Sky on a program of great success and popularity such as “X Factor” has been ideal to test all the functionalities of the system, but especially a fundamental step to understand the expectations and the needs of the audience out there. We are grateful to Sky for the valuable opportunity which has been offered to us.”

Have a look here for an overview of the platform. In this article you'll read how CEO Vaccarella sees these kinds of platforms evolve in relation to the increasing digitized society.

 

The Super Bowl is the most watched television event in history and within the hot second screen space, there will be plenty of competition for eyeballs in companion apps this year.

Twitter could be the go to app for the Super Bowl. Twitter reported on its blog last year that the Super Bowl had the highest TPS (tweets per second) for any sporting event. With healthy growth over the last year, in part from integration with Apple’s iOS 5, it is a safe bet that this record will be topped. This year, it seems the NFL is finally embracing social media. The NFL has announced that it will be allowing players to tweet from computer stations on the sidelines during the annual Pro Bowl game. While players won’t be allowed to tweet during the Super Bowl, Mashable reports that the Super Bowl Host Committee in Indianapolis will be opening a massive “social media command center” staffed by a team who will monitor fan conversation on Twitter and Facebook and assist them with 140 character tips and advice.

National brands are getting into the second screen game around the Super Bowl. We have seen other brands create live engagement apps for sports before. For example, Heineken’s StarPlayer app, allows players to forecast the outcome of key moments during a sporting event to win status. Chevrolet's Game Time app for the Super Bowl differentiates itself with physical prizes including 20 automobiles. The app has a layout similar to MTV’s WatchWith app powered by Rogue Paper’s TV Tune-In platform and features live trivia and polls about the game in a little news boxes, as well as a ticker stream at the bottom with twitter comments. One of the boxes includes your personal “license” plate number, which you can try and match with the license plate in the Chevy Super Bowl spot to win a car.

This is one of the best-funded TV to second screens pushes we have seen to date with estimated cost of upwards of $500k in prizes for the promotion. They even have Tim Allen in the spots to announce to viewers to play along on their mobile devices. “Play along with the Super Bowl as we put in the game in your hands.” With a 30 second spot going for $3.5m, each 10 second mention of the Game Time mobile app is going to cost Chevrolet $350k.
Meanwhile, the NFL has experimented with fantasy football and social media hybrid with its Fantasy Playoff Challenge launched several weeks ago. The prizes aren’t as grand as Chevy’s contest but players could win a trip to next years Super Bowl hosted in my hometown, New Orleans.

Next, NFL’s official Superbowl XLVI mobile app is sure to impress. The huddle tab in the app provides social media buzz from players (presumably before the game and not during for reasons stated before), fans, and NFL insiders. If you are at the stadium, the app also provides slick, 3d rendering of the Indianapolis and the Lucus Oil Stadium powered by UpNext’s 3d mapping platform. If you are watching from home and happen to have a Verizon wireless mobile device, the Super Bowl will be streamed live for the first time through Verizon’s NFL mobile app so fans don’t miss a second of the action. The game can also be streamed live from NBCSports.com and NFL.com through a web browser. The webcasts will use the same Sunday Night Football platform, which includes "HD broadcast, DVR-style controls, additional camera angles, in-game highlights, live statistics and interactive elements."

Finally, some TV-related startups are throwing their hats into the ring with Super Bowl second screen content. Shazam announced that up to a third of ads for the Super Bowl with be “shazam-able”. The Super Bowl XLVI page on GetGlue, the entertainment check-in service, already has over 5,000 check-ins more than a week before the game. Look out for some limited time Super Bowl XLVI stickers on GetGlue provided by NBC Sports. While limited time stickers aren’t quite as nice as a new car, they are still a fun way to enjoy the game.

Whether you are watching the game at home, at sport bar, or at the stadium, look out for a changing Super Bowl viewing experience with your mobile device by your side.

Social TV analytics company Bluefin Labs today announced it has raised $12 million in a Series B round led by Time Warner Investments with participation from new investor SoftBank Capital and return investors Redpoint Ventures and Lerer Ventures.

"There are meaningful implications for the television and advertising industries as companies learn to leverage social media and big data for competitive advantage. We are looking forward to scaling this service further and continuing the transformation of how the industry understands consumer engagement with shows, brands, and commercials on TV."

Bluefin Labs first introduced its analytics service through a private pilot program in May 2011, and followed quickly in July 2011 with the launch of its flagship product, Bluefin Signals. Bluefin Signals is an analytics platform that analyzes and organizes social media conversations about US national television. Clients of Bluefin Signals leverage social data about TV shows and commercials to inform the buying and selling of TV media. Clients are a mix of television networks, marketers and agencies including CBS, Fox, Discovery Communications, MediaCom, MTV Networks, Starcom MediaVest Group and many more.

The new financing will be used to accelerate growth of Bluefin Labs' sales and client services efforts. The company will also continue to invest heavily in technology and R&D to lead further innovation in the field of social TV analytics.

"We are witnessing a huge shift in consumer behavior, as people now naturally turn to social media to voice their opinions about what they are watching on television. Our technology allows us to therefore provide deep insights into consumer mindsets," said Deb Roy, co-founder and CEO, Bluefin Labs. "We are continuing to build out Bluefin's services to provide enhanced data which enables our clients to glean more of an understanding of their audiences and target consumers."

Rachel Lam, senior vice president and group managing director of Time Warner Investments will join the board of directors. Ms. Lam brings her extensive experience in the media sector and venture capital, and has played an instrumental role in funding companies in the digital media and ad technology spaces.

"Bluefin Labs has created an innovative analytics platform that captures how people respond to television in real-time," said Ms. Lam. "There are meaningful implications for the television and advertising industries as companies learn to leverage social media and big data for competitive advantage. We are looking forward to scaling this service further and continuing the transformation of how the industry understands consumer engagement with shows, brands, and commercials on TV."

To date, Bluefin Signals provides enterprise-quality data and analysis of social media responses to more than 346,000 individual TV telecasts airing across all television dayparts and programming genres. For media planners, Bluefin Signals helps find placements on TV where brand receptivity and engagement is highest. And for media buyers, the data is a uniquely-differentiated metric in making media investment decisions to achieve high "earned" social reach, in addition to paid TV exposure.

When President Obama takes the podium on Tuesday, January 24th at 9:00 p.m. ET to deliver his 2012 State of the Union Address, anyone across the country can, for the first time, clip a video of any moment from the speech to tweet, post or embed in their blog.

Do you ever notice that when you see something great on TV everyone talks about it on Twitter, but it takes hours or longer for that clip to show up online? Getting clips from TV or live web video is a painful and time consuming process that leaves people on Twitter and Facebook with nothing to share except iPhone recordings on YouTube. 

To solve this problem, SnappyTV has created the web’s first cloud-based, live video editing tool that allows content owners and their fans to instantly publish highlight clips from live content to the web in a rights friendly way. It allows broadcasters, media and other rights approved users to instantly create clips of live TV and web streams, as they air, and share them on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other social media outlets in real-time. SnappyTV is opening up our platform for anyone to use during this year's State of the Union Address.

The SnappyTV Pro Editor provides a powerful tool for content owners, bloggers and news outlets to instantly publish clips from TV or streaming web video to fans or followers. Key features of the Pro Editor include:

• Cloud-based live editing functionality allows editors, marketers, and social media managers to create clips of live shows using a standard computer and web connection.
• One-click social publishing to blogs, social networks and content management systems, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Quick access to embed code or file download lets you add clips to your blog or news story in seconds and integrations with Brightcove and Ooyala extend your reach.
• Integrated Twitter tabs lets editors track the social buzz around their content, direct message influencers with video clips and make informed editing decisions. 
• Collaboration options let multiple users create and share clips together, enabling real-time editing workflows never before possible.  Our iPhone app allows remote team members to suggest edit points and text to editors.
• Embeddable widgets enable customers to instantly publish clips to an existing website or second screen app. 

“Every month, there are over 3 billion messages on Facebook and Twitter referencing real-time TV content. This year’s State of the Union will drive a massive conversation online, and we enable anyone to publish clips into that conversation as its happening,” said Mike Folgner, CEO of SnappyTV. “The State of the Union provides us with a unique opportunity to let everyone try our powerful real-time publishing platform. With the SnappyTV Pro Editor, tight social integration and embeddable widgets, we’re providing the tools that broadcasters and content rights holders need to infuse the social conversation with the video of the moments fans are buzzing about.”

Want to try it yourself? The SnappyTV Pro Editor is available for free to the public for Tuesday’s State of the Union Address using video from the 2011 event and for any other White House event. Give the Pro Editor a try at http://snpy.tv/sotu2012 (it’s free, but requires site registration) or send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to request a product demo or more information.