With Trendrr, Twitter investing in social TV - BBC

computer screens decidedly not sufficient to Twitter. The U.S. site announced Wednesday its acquisition of Trendrr, a start-up that examines the relationship between social networks and television. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Trendrr confirmed the announcement in a blog post. “We are very pleased to join the Twitter team,” commented Mark Ghuneim, CEO of Trendrr, “it will allow us to achieve great opportunities to provide a better experience to our users, the media and advertising.”

Canal + and TF1 as clients

Trendrr offers two products to its customers. The first Trendrr.TV, includes several tools to measure the “investment” of users to their television sets, that is to say their discussions on social networks about a particular program and their reactions to advertisements that pass on their small screen. The second product, Curatorr focuses on identifying tweets “high quality”, that is to say high potential for sharing. It allows brands and television better interaction with web-goers.

Established in 2007 by the agency Wiredset, Trendrr already has large TV among its clients. The U.S. MTV Spanish Telemundo and subscribe to its services. The start-up also works with Canal + and TF1. Curatorr has been used for French popular shows such as “The Voice,” “Dancing with the Stars” or “American Idol” (now posted on D8 chain owned by Canal + Group). Trendrr said he did not intend to sign new contracts with chains at the moment.

strategy already well established

after website Mashable , citing one of its spokesmen, who is more interested Curatorr Twitter. Indeed, Twitter already offers similar to Trendrr.TV service. Officially launched in July in the United States, it can make them more receptive to the message registered users. To do this, mark those Twitter “tweet” about a particular television program, then selects sponsored tweets (ads as tweets) brands that are advertising on the show. Twitter then sends these tweets viewers, thus receive an advertising message “relevant” to what they are currently watching.

For example, if Mary tweeted about the “New Star” and that calls for an X mark appears on the screen during the commercial break, Twitter will send at the same time a tweet sponsored by Brand X . Thus, Mary will receive the message from the X mark on both the TV screen and on their computer or smartphone.

buying Trendrr, Twitter increase its efforts to partner with television. The social network has everything to gain to develop these relations, which can bring him close in terms of advertising revenue. It has already officially associated with Nielsen, which specializes in measuring television audiences in late 2012. A partnership that consists of the publication of studies attempting to prove that the number of tweets and audience levels are linked. In the long term, it should also lead to the creation of a whole new audience measurement to evaluate the success of television programs based on the tweets they generate. Nevertheless, Twitter just yet to prove any causal link. Trendrr himself last month published a study saying that people speak five times more TV on Facebook on Twitter and other social networks. The blue bird is still far from being the master of our zapping.