By Kaylin Slakey
Last week was Social Media Week, a global event designed to shine a spotlight on emerging trends in social media. Panels, networking events and keynote addresses were held everywhere from New York City to Singapore and Brazil to discuss the ways that social media is evolving and impacting both businesses and the consumer.
Here in San Francisco, Social Media Week events covered a wide range of topics including social commerce, social data, building a social brand, measurement and social activism. Though all of the events tried to tackle a different aspect of social media, a trend was apparent in nearly every agenda – they incorporated mobile into the conversation.
One panel that I attended, “The Future of Social TV,” was not one that I expected to focus on mobile trends. However, from the very beginning of the panel it was obvious that mobile deserves to be at the center of the Social TV discussion.
The panelists explained that most of the social interaction around TV today isn’t actually occurring within the apps on an interactive TV, it’s happening on the user’s second screen – their tablet, laptop or smartphone. Whether it’s during the Super Bowl, the Grammys, a presidential debate or the new episode of Real Housewives, synchronized conversations about TV are happening on Twitter and Facebook from people watching with their mobile devices in hand.
While some companies are trying to bring the social experience directly onto your TV, others are embracing the second screen TV trend. In fact, one panelist described the dream of Social TV as walking into your house, turning on your TV, and having your mobile device know what you’re watching and customize it for you.
From this panel, and from the other events during social media week, it became clear to me how deeply intertwined social media and mobile technology have become and that their incredible growth has been, in part, a result of the other’s success.
What do you think about the relationship of social media and mobile technology?
A little bit about me: Interested in the business side of mobile as well as learning about cutting edge capabilities and new apps. I know the second part of that statement begs the question: “then why do you use a BlackBerry?”, but we will save that discussion for another day, another blog post.
