The other day I ran into an old friend. Luis. He is 42 years old. He lives alone in Madrid. And he is a staunch fan of Alberto Chicote's programme. But, curiously, he doesn't like cooking. What he likes is something else. Luis is part of the group that has become hooked on the phenomenon of social television or Social TV., which always seems to sound better in English.
What is it? We can get bogged down with complex definitions (in reality, the concept is quite broad because it refers to everything to do with interactive television. (here you can see what it covers), but my friend Luis offers a simple explanation of this phenomenon: sitting on the sofa to watch TV not only with the remote control but also with the mobile phone or the iPad, so that you can comment on the TV and watch it on the move. the play. Where and with whom is it discussed? There are several options (and applications specific) but the one that seems to be winning the race is Twitter. Using the hashtag qhe presenter is in charge of remembering - if he does not appear fixed on the side of the screen - one watches the programme and sees or launches the comments it generates.
Don't tell me you have never practiced social television? Well, you must be one of the few. According to a recent study by Nielsen, 80% of TV viewers use their mobile device as a second screen while watching TV.
And according to another study, in this case by Viacom, the 72% of users comment on social networks with their friends about the programmes they are watching. This weekend, for example, the solidarity gala of Tu Cara Me Suena, of Antena 3 (yes, that one that won Roko with her Amy Winehouse impersonation and which was followed by more than two million viewers, 17% of the audience). broke records on Twitter with more than 81,000 comments. That's about 311 comments per minute, to give you a better idea. The programme achieved 32 trending topics national and 15 world championships.
The same or similar
or it can be said of many other Spanish television programmes... and foreign ones.
Naturally, television broadcasters are delighted with a phenomenon that they are already showing off to advertisers. Nielsen and Twitter have already started to measure it for them. communication officers, The marketing and advertising companies, always on the lookout for ways to get closer to their customers, are taking note of this new way of watching television.
But are we really facing a change in viewers' consumption habits, as the networks and some experts say?
Frankly, I don't think so. And allow me to be transgressive. In reality, technological distances aside, this is a return to the past.
Don't you remember that old picture of the whole family sitting around the sofa watching a television programme and discussing the play and asking others to keep quiet so as not to lose the thread? Eurovision - in the good old days, of course - was one of those events, like Un, Dos, Tres. Just like many others, when television was that device that brought the family together around the sofa and not a gadget that, as it is now, has multiplied like the miracle of the loaves and p
ecess and it is in the living room, in the kitchen, in the bedrooms, on the terraces... and, in some cases, even in the bathroom. Yes, yes, in the bathroom.
What Twitter has done and other social networks is to give us back that pleasure of watching television in companyTo be able to see and comment, to share the emotions that it generates in us... With the difference that now we don't even need to be physically together. Nor do friends have to be friends. What social networks have done is to widen the options for us. for humans to cover that need so primary, so ours: to communicate, to share with others our emotions, ideas, feelings, suggestions, joys, rages, hatreds... But that, sorry for those who are still reluctant to fall into social networks, I have no choice but to warn that they are not and will not be a fad. They have come and they are here to stay. Because they are based on something intrinsic to the human being: their need to communicate and socialise with others.
So let's not go crazy. From a technological point of view, it is true that we are facing a great revolution. But seen from a sociological point of view, social networks are nothing more than a reflection in another mirror -okay, yes, a mirror in which reality appears magnified and runs much faster- of situations that we already know and have experienced in the past. The only - and important - difference is that now they are not subject to the corsets of the physical world. And that, from a human point of view, should be seen as a positive element.
@consuelocalle_
Director of Proa Comunicación