Twitter new website enriches real-time information

written by: Gianluigi Cuccureddu

Details

Published on Wednesday, 15 September 2010 19:41

Tuesday Twitter unveiled an enhanced version of their website to a small set of users.

What has changed?
Users will see a dual-panel screen. At the left the user will see the tweet-stream, at the right users now will see directly
embedded photos, video and other additional information that come forth from a click on a tweet at the left.


At courtesy of Wired.

Wired further reports that Twitter has partnered up with 16 media companies to be able to embed media on the Twitter website.
Amongst the 16 companies are YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic and Vimeo.

Earlier this year we reported on the Agora Media Group blog that Twitter has released a Streaming API that is able to support the following:

* You’re visualizing tweets in real-time online or on-air.
* You want to present tweets in a continuously-refreshing experience, e.g, you want to broadcast new NCAA basketball tweets as they’re created.
* You’re following a specific group of users in real-time, e.g. a group of reporters.
* You want to capture a very large number of tweets for analysis (either real-time or after-the-fact), e.g. all the tweets about a State of the Union address.

When combined these two developments with Twitter's CEO Evan Williams that the company is primarily a real-time information network, then indeed the emphasis is on information and context and real-time.

What does this mean for Social TV?
Interaction and real-time information via Twitter become much richer and enhances the primary TV content in two ways:
* Twitter can partner up with broadcasters and content providers to embed in a relevant way their content as soon as users are tweeting about it.
In an dual-panel structure this could be a (cluttery?) one-screen experience, or a two-screen experience.

* TV content can be real-time enhanced with information from Twitter on the specific content. Twitter could provide it's own stream plus the embedding of other sources as well.

In combination with the dual-pane experience (which essentially is an enhancement of the Twitter stream), Twitter would be able to provide a platform that contextually enhances content, like other companies do.

In terms of revenue models which are also debated in the Wired magazine, I -still- favor a focussed B2B model: the insights that these sort of platforms can provide companies.
Think of Social Network Analysis (SNA) services and other data extractions that can alter the insights in consumer behavior faster and possible more indepth (due to the larger group).
All the socially focused networks like Twitter, Philo, Miso and others are able to enhance the understanding for broadcasters, content providers and tv networks.

Not only can the content be researched, relations with other applications and combined usage of it can be better understood.
This will give developers an enhanced understanding of how applications are used and how they can be relevantly be upgraded.

Twitter (information) positions itself differently from Facebook (connections), which of the two have a better starting point for Social TV?
The primary entities, thus users, or the actions/needs of users, i.e. the information they're looking for.