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Twitter on TV: The next microblogging deals frontier?

Twitter envisions itself displacing the canonical water cooler for TV discussion; now it just needs to make some deals.

Rachel King Staff Writer
Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.
Rachel King
2 min read

Twitter has gotten itself integrated everywhere from Internet-connected TVs to what could be considered the highest achievement so far: baked right into iOS 5. It's just short of being an all-knowing presence at this point.

Obviously, Twitter is aware of this, going so far as to boast that it has bumped the long-standing status of the office water cooler as the ultimate post-TV show discussion ground. Just look at reserved hashtags for shows like Dancing With The Stars (#DWTS) and The Big Bang Theory (#BigBangTheory).

Thus, it would make sense for Twitter to make some deals in this arena and actually get something useful out of this power.

Kicking off what could be a whole new brand of marketing for Twitter, the micro-blogging giant has teamed with the new, U.S. version of The X Factor in which viewers can cast votes for their favorite contestants via Twitter.

The process is quite simple. First, one obviously has to follow @TheXFactorUSA. Fans of the show can then submit votes via Direct Message. Tweets, however, do not count as votes -- although Tweets from the host, judges, and the contestants will be featured to produce "every angle of the action."

It sounds a bit overwhelming, but when it comes to shows like The X Factor, it's more than likely that most of the audience is already accostomed to and using social media more frequently than not. So not only does this benefit Twitter with more promotion and more traffic, but TV producers and executives have more metrics to go on.

Possible win, win.

This post first appeared on ZDNet's Between the Lines blog.