My new friends from Kit Digital are right on it:

Alan Wolk: Managing Director, Social Strategy Group @ KIT digital

In the spirit of research and investigation, I tried most of the Oscar oriented apps and several of the general social TV apps during last night’s broadcast.

 Crickets.

At least from my friends, who all seemed to be on Twitter (as they always are for events like the Oscars). The 300 or so people I follow on Twitter provided enough rapid-fire commentary on their own to keep me from even bothering with hashtags.

Now while my Twitter friends do not a focus group make, the obvious takeaway here is that critical mass is very, very important to the success of any social TV app.

And that Twitter would be mad not to create one of their own.

They’ve already got the bulk of the conversation. And they desperately need a way to make money that doesn’t involve sponsored tweets. So why not just create their own Social TV app that looks and feels just like Twitter only with extras like audio recognition for check-in or polls or the ability to see which shows are trending now.

The social TV functions don’t even need to be a separate app- they would likely work better if Twitter just added a series of TV-focused features on the existing Twitter mobile apps and allowed them to function like “Trending Now” or hashtags – additional information available to users when they want to see it, but done in a way that doesn’t interfere with their day-to-day tweeting.

The bulk of social TV experiences are going to be around the same big events we all talk about in real life: the Oscars, the Super Bowl, the Grammys. Twitter is the perfect companion for them and they’d be foolish not to capitalize on that.

My reply:

Jeff Schroer says:
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February 29, 2012 at 3:42 pm

I think you are right on here Alan. After watching yet another series of Social TV panels via TVnext, the 800lb Gorilla (or Bird) in the room is twitter and you can sense the fear from the second screen apps. Twitter is the EKG and / or spine of Social TV in it’s early stages and nobody else with “skin in the game” will admit it. The main issue with twitter it the low adoption rate that has always been an issue. Too many people will not take the time to learn the nuance of @s, #s and well curated Lists in order to have that great Social TV experience.

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