Twitter

The rise of social media, in particular Twitter, has benefitted television shows for a while now with many shows now publicising hashtags and presenter twitter accounts on air but in a new bid to drive traffic to their site, Twitter turned to TV advertising for the first time ever.

On Sunday, TV adverts directed Nascar fans watching to a page of selected tweets.  The seven 15 second ads were aired during the Pocono 400, and is the biggest drive from Twitter to tap into the TV market.

The adverts showed the Nascar drivers posting tweets from their phones and promoting selective tweets about the race.  The page was viewable by users of Twitter as well as those who aren’t registered.  It is the first time Twitter has used an editorially driven approach to promote its site rather than relying heavily on its own users.

Twitter’s head of communications, Gabriel Stricker said, “A 15-second spot is the on-air equivalent of a 140-character tweet.” Continue reading »

What’s On TV report today that Dragons’ Den star Duncan Bannatyne has been involved in an online drama, offering a big reward for the capture of someone attempting to blackmail him.

Here’s the story…

On Tuesday afternoon Duncan tweeted: “I offer 25,000 pounds reward for the capture of the coward who calls himself @yurivasilyev. Double if his arms are broken first”

The person behind the account had allegedly threatened to harm Duncan’s daughter Hollie and to bring ‘hurt and pain’ into his life if he didn’t stump up a 35,000-pound investment.

Duncan had tracked the person responsible to an internet cafe in Moscow via the computer’s IP address.

Defending his offer of cash to have the blackmailer hurt, he said: “I will gladly do my time.”

And then he upped the reward for the alleged blackmailer’s arrest to 30,000 pounds and warned him to ‘go home to your mum and cry we are closing in on you little boy’.

Duncan later deleted the tweet about maiming the blackmailer.

Gathering the entertainment news, so you don’t have to

For someone who is perpetually watching TV with a laptop on my knee (it’s kinda in the job description, y’know?), Twitter is something of a godsend. For example, when The X Factor is on, everyone kicks into gear and Tweets the funny things they’ve spotted and slags off/sings the praises of each contestant, making the show feel like a big, proper event.

And so. Twitter users will soon be able to tweet to each other via their TV sets while watching entertainment and sports shows, after Orange struck a deal to integrate the service into its mobile and television offerings.

Under the deal, Orange is aiming to integrate Twitter into football coverage, news, entertainment shows and films… and thereby, giving those that want it, a fun running commentary of garbled abuse and witty asides.

Orange said that Twitter services would be rolled out in the UK first, to be followed by France, Spain and Poland later this year. The service will be rolled out in other European markets next year.

“In countries where we have TV services we plan to enrich shows by allowing people to tweet while they watch their favourite programmes,” said Stephanie Hospital, director of development and partnerships at Orange.

The key to the deal, said Orange, is that Twitter will become completely integrated with the suite of digital media services available via its mobile portal.

Twitter fans will not have to go through a mobile application and then have to access their Twitter homepage every time they want to check an update.

“By integrating Twitter into our various mobile and internet services we are making it a greater part of people’s every day lives,” said Paul Francois Fournier, executive vice president at Orange.

Orange said that paying for mobile Twitter use would come out of mobile phone customers’ existing packages. In order to make sure that users with many “followers” do not exhaust their mobile package allowances rapidly controls have been put in place.

That said, Tweeters will have to set a limit in advance on the number of tweets they want to receive each day and also the number of people they are following that they want to receive updates from.

She added that while the new service would be available to all Orange customers, the company intended to push it more heavily to those with its Dolphin package, which is tailored towards multimedia phone users.

Alternatively, you could just buy an iPhone or whatever.

[viaGuardian]