tv

Does mainstream media really boost Twitter followers?

January 26, 2009 By Dan Thornton

There’s been some coverage of the appearance of Twitter on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, due to both @wossy and guest @stephenfry not only being ‘celebs who Twitter’, but actualy ‘celebs who really get how Twitter works’.

Martin Belam calculated that Stephen Fry had increased his follower count by 16% between the filming on Thursday and Sunday morning.

Personally, I’d have calculated any effect from when the programme was first shown, as that’s when new followers would appear. Neville Hobson used Twittercounter to count 4000 new followers for StephenFry in the first 24 hours, but really focuses on the increase in activity and conversation from existing Twitter users about the TV mention. (Techcrunch UK also has a summary of the TV coverage)

But hang on a minute.

Even if we take the total at 10.30pm on Sunday, @stephenfry has gained 8864 from an audience of 4million+. Meanwhile 84% of his followers appeared before the mass media appearance, by finding him on Twitter and spreading the word.

So he gained 8/10 followers by conversation, word of mouth and social networking, and just 2/10ish by broadcasting on the biggest national TV station in the UK.

Does mainstream media coverage really boost followers or validate Twitter?

Creative inspiration – interviews with TV writers

January 8, 2009 By Dan Thornton

It’s easy to like Charlie Brooker for his ability to rip something apart in a suitably scathing way, but sometimes he also betrays himself by giving away insights into how to build something up in the first place.

Which is why I’ve spent a happy 50 minutes watching a Screenwipe episode in which he interviews some brilliant TV writers about how and why they write.

The writers are Russell T Davies (Doctor Who), Graham Linehan (Father Ted, the I.T Crowd), Paul Abbott (Shameless), Tony Jordan (Eastenders, Hustle), Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain (Peep Show), and Brooker himself wrote Dead Set, which is on Channel 4 at the moment.

Highly recommended for anyone doing anything creative – it’s inspirational, makes writing seem hard but possible, and helps remind everyone that there’s no set rule on how to do it, aside from hard work.

Sadly, the fact it’s on the otherwise brilliant iPlayer means:

I can’t embed it.
The chuffing thing will be gone in 5 days (or 30 if I download it).
The fact I want to watch it again and again in the future means some enterprising person will have to illegally steal it and distribute it.

Internet pirates will sail the streams…

September 3, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Interestingly, after postulating (and possibly posturing) my view on how streaming TV and video solutions are a bigger piracy threat than Peer-to-Peer services like Bitorrent (Which grab all the headlines and the attention of the multimedia industries), I spotted this: P2P traffic drops as streaming video grows in popularity.

While the Ars Technica article looks at legal streaming solutions, like the BBC iPlayer, Hulu and Veoh, the fact that it’s encouraging users to utilise faster broadband connections to consume content which is quicker, easier and safer to view means there’s likely to be an equally large amount of people realising ways they can share paid content for free via streaming websites.

Funnily enough, it’s not just problems with the content itself – The Spyware Guide blog reveals an example of a fake site claiming to stream the complete Batman: The Dark Knight movie – but the real motive is to get you to download a dodgy .exe file.

The revolution will be televised – for free…

September 1, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Despite the best efforts of various TV and music organisations, I’m more convinced than ever that content simply has to be made available for free, and monetised in a method other than subscriptions or Pay Per View.

Almost every day, there’s a new push by various industry groups to penalise file sharers, which is about as effective as trying to stop ants coming into your garden. But regardless, the focus on P2P file sharing seems to have ignored another delivery method which is just as damaging to the idea of paid content – if not moreso.

Yesterday I stumbled across the Chelsa – Tottenham London derby – a football (soccer for my U.S. readers) match that would either cost money to view, or require a trip to a pub. Instead I watched it in my house, for free, and in reasonable quality. I won’t say which site I watched, as obviously i don’t want to encourage illegal behaviour – but it didn’t require any downloads, any file sharing, or any effort on my part.

It was via a webcam sharing service, and quick research shows it’s definitely not the only one which is being used to distribute media content as much as lifestreaming webcams of individuals. What was really interesting was that a quick scan round showed the lifestreaming webcam shows were picking up as many as 100 viewers – whereas the live streaming of sporting events like the football was picking up over 10,000 viewers!

There have been ways for the determined to avoid paying for football etc for quite a few years, but all of them tended to require a software download, and a bit of guesswork (sometimes involving navigating Asian menus to find streams from the Far East for example – so I’ve been told!). But ttis method means no barriers, no hassles, and a quicker response than even official media players like the BBC iPlayer.

And if 10,000 watched the game with me, it’s not outside the realms of the imagination to picture at least another 50 or 100 sites offering the same content, with figures also in the thousands. The site I viewed certainly wasn’t the biggest or most well known in the genre – so are we saying 500,000 or 1,000,000 people were watching the game for free yesterday?

That number only grows with word-of-mouth, and removing one site or broadcaster will only see it replaced by more. In fact, with faster broadband, better webcams, and better ways of feeding live streams, it’d be even easier for a group of 5 or 10 people to club together and set up their own private network to share the costs of just one of them signing up for paid content.

And trying to shut down every example is akin to trying to cut the grass with a pair of nail scissors….

I’ve talked about how TV companies can still monetise themselves, and at the moment, there’s a little opportunity for content that exists at the edges of popularity, because it’s hard to find a stream. But all it takes is one person with a webcam to solve that problem…