A Wave Of Tech Industry Deals Is Streamlining The World Of Social TV

There is no question that much of the "water-cooler conversation" around TV shows and televised sports has moved to social media. But there are way too many specialized social TV services and apps out there.

As we predicted, a wave of consolidation has begun to change that. Last month, i.TV acquired GetGlue, a social TV check-in service. This year, Twitter acquired two social TV analytics companies, Bluefin Labs and Trendrr. Some believe that Apple's acquisition of Topsy, a Twitter-focused analytics firm, is ultimately about social TV.

In a recent report on social TV apps from BI Intelligence, we find that second screen apps fall into the same trap Foursquare waded into with location-based services. Foursquare hasn't fulfilled its ambitions because location-based social-mobile behavior is not enough of a separate category to merit a separate stand-alone social network. Social TV has the same problem.

But there are still plenty of social TV players out there, including Zeebox and Viggle, as well as Shazam's social TV experiments. These are poised for absorption by larger tech companies keen to wade deeper into TV-land.

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Here are some highlights from our report on how the second screen trend is shaping up:

• In the first quarter of 2013, 46% of U.S. smartphone owners and 40% of tablet owners said they used their devices while watching TV on a daily basis. Nine months earlier, only 39% of smartphone owners had reported doing so.
• But are these mobile activities actually related to what's on TV? Yes, many of them are. Fifty-three percent of consumers with tablets or smartphones have engaged in mobile-based activity related to what they're watching on TV.
• Buying products being advertised has become a surprisingly popular activity. Twenty percent of second screen audiences on tablets and 13% of those on smartphones reported doing so, according to Nielsen.
• Show-themed and second screen apps that ask audiences to open an app during shows and sync to TV in order to deliver content tie-ins will not be the big winners - they're asking too much of audiences.
• Broadly speaking, dedicated second screen apps that have built platforms around second screen activity seem to be trying different models in order to see what sticks. Overall, they've seen decent growth in audience size, but not dramatic growth. And lately it has looked flat.
• Twitter has an ambitious strategy for capitalizing on second screen behavior and tying it into the rest of its ad ecosystem, but it may be overstating tweets' impact on TV ratings.
• A wave of consolidation will wash through the second screen ecosystem this year as big tech players wake up to its importance and its unique place bridging the digital-TV divide.

The full report provides in-depth analysis and detailed data on these trends, including a dozen charts with underlying data sets that subscribers can download and use in spreadsheet format.

It also takes stock of how far the second screen industry has come and how mobile-social behavior overlaps with the second screen trend.

In full, the report:

• Breaks down Twitter's findings that certain genres - reality TV in particular - are more susceptible to ratings effects from tweets
• Explains why second screen will be about encouraging activity that's more natural than sync-to-TV apps, like commenting about a show on social media
• Analyzes all the data and trend-lines in terms of consumer adoption of second screen behavior
• Examines why stand-alone social TV apps may be suffering from a "Foursquare problem," building a service around a feature like TV show check-ins rather than a deep experience
• Looks at why second screen is perhaps the best way to bridge digital and TV
• Explains the second screen overlap with social TV

For full access to this report along with dozens of in-depth mobile industry reports and a library of hundreds of downloadable charts and data, sign up for a two-week free trial of BI Intelligence.