Two-screen or second-screen viewing is a 21st century experience. If you own a mobile device (or really like to sit with your laptop on your actual lap), you have no doubt engaged in the practice during major television events. The Super Bowl is the ultimate in major TV events. And social media – Twitter in particular – serves to underscore that.
Getting ready for the Super Bowl this year at my house involved chilling Chardonnay, making a cheese platter and organizing Dungeness crab and sourdough bread for the second half (yes, we live in San Francisco). But along with the food and drink being moved in front of the big screen, I also brought my iPhone and iPad for texting and tweeting. They were essential to the experience, which for me includes snarky comments about the ads and entertainment and very little to do with the game.
People like me used to be annoying to our spouses and others who just wanted to watch the game (or the awards ceremony or the the election returns). Our running commentary was unappreciated. On Twitter, though, there are hundreds who find us funny, charming and insightful. We know this because they respond and retweet some of our best moments, like:
“Fun sold out” #tacobell
when the person sitting next has no idea what we were talking about.
Twitter and its short and sweet 140-character micro-blogging platform is indeed the social network of choice for going two-screen. The steady stream of comments – or tweets – a user can make typically offends no one. In fact, I gained three new followers during the show. Make 10 or 12 posts to Facebook in an hour and see where that gets you!
Lance Ulanoff, the Editor-in-Chief of Mashable, writes a glowing tribute to Twitter – and pronounces its performance during this year’s Super Bowl essentially its coming of age. Ulanoff even goes so far as to declare Twitter the winner of this year’s Super Bowl (and not the Baltimore Ravens).
Twitter will turn seven this year, but most early-day users came on board between 2007 and 2009. During this time, Ulanoff writes “Twitter transitioned to a rich, crowdsourced, micro-burst newsfeed” which makes it perfect when something that is truly changing the world is happening…or Beyonce’s half-time performance blows a circuit breaker at the Super Dome.
According to Mashable, there were 24.1 million tweets made during this year’s Super Bowl broadcast, a breakdown of 268,000 tweets per minute (TPM). This may make Super Bowl XLVII the most tweeted event in history (so far). Mashable previously reported that Election Night 2012 was the most tweeted event with 20 million tweets.
Source: Mashable.com
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
