Reported by Reuben Stern and Olga Kyle.
On-air TV programming combined with social media channels — dubbed “Social participation TV” — is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. This week we explore three tools that bring the mobile-device-using audience into a live broadcast.
PART 1: Wayin
Denver-based startup Wayin has created a system to help newsrooms make sense of the mass of Twitter posts around a specific topic and to integrate that social media conversation into a live TV broadcast. Tim Glomb, vice president for media & entertainment at Wayin, shows us how the technology navigates the social stream.
Reporting by Tatiana Darie and Reuben Stern.
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Additional information:
Wayin has two main products:
- Wayin Broadcast tracks Twitter participation in real-time and identifies the content that mostly resonates with the audience.
- Wayin Hub is an interactive online platform that aggregates social media conversations into web widgets — such as polling to tweets to graphs and multi-meters — that clients can place on their websites or alongside streaming content or also as part of a second screen experience.
PART 2: Excitem
Gathering audience feedback during a live show can be difficult with an audience that uses a variety of social commenting platforms. Excitem is a behind-the-scenes tool for assembling responses to on-air questions via Facebook, Twitter and old-fashioned text message. We hear how it works from co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Belal Hummadi.
Reporting by Ninh Pham and Reuben Stern.
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PART 3: iPowow
Another approach to audience response is to make it more game-like. The system created by iPowow enables broadcasters to embed multiple types of questions into a mobile app or website, with the responses tallied up in real time directly on air via the newsroom’s onscreen graphics system. Colin Hornett, executive producer at iPowow, gives us a demonstration.
Reporting by Ninh Pham and Reuben Stern.
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Reuben Stern is the deputy director of the Futures Lab at the Reynolds Journalism Institute and host and co-producer of the weekly Futures Lab video update.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute’s Futures Lab video update features a roundup of fresh ideas, techniques and developments to help spark innovation and change in newsrooms across all media platforms. Visit the RJI website for the full archive of Futures Lab videos, or download the iPad app to watch the show wherever you go. You can also sign up to receive email notification of each new episode.
