Twitter CEO on Second Screen Social TV and Shows Becoming Events

written by: Richard Kastelein

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Published on Wednesday, 16 February 2011 06:38

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently talked Social TV at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on the potential of the site as a major edge in business. CNN explains:

Twitter has become a “second screen” alongside television, making major social events out of live TV, programmed broadcasts and even commercials, Costolo said in a keynote address at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. For instance, when Fox airs the show Glee, Twitter traffic increases by a factor of 30 and maintains that rate until the show is over. And during this year’s Super Bowl, users blasted out 4,000 tweets per second.

“There are business implications of this trend: TV shows become events, meaning people watch them as they happen,” Costolo said. “We’re so used to creating experiences for our users, but now our users are creating experiences for each other.”

There was more via BBC coverage:

Mr Costolo did also hint at possible tie-ups with TV advertisers, playing up Twitter's value during TV shows such as live sports, saying that the service was turning people against DVRs and on-demand services because they preferred to watch in "real time" so that they could tweet. The assertion will be welcomed by TV advertisers which have seen revenues fall as a result of people using DVRs and other methods to watch content.

Interesting to note that he feels second screen behaviour is actually driving people back from catchup TV to real-time, so people can chat with their friends while watching the show. That's a huge assertion.

He also dismissed rumours of a 10 billion dollar acquisition by Facebook or Google as well as revealed some startling numbers:

Twitter now regularly carries 130 million tweets a day and during major events, such as the football World Cup can see upwards of 3,000 tweets a second, Mr Costolo said The record, he revealed, was 6,000 tweets per second in Japan at New Year's Eve.