Founder of SecondSync and Senior Product Manager for Twitter, Andy Littledale, joined us to talk data, behaviour patterns, and his journey from a bootstrap start up to Twitter acquisition. Here are five things I learned from Andy’s talk:

1. SecondSync’s model of tracking Twitter traffic around specific TV programmes was born from a prototype interface viewed on a table, developed with BBC’s Frozen Planet that provided fact files on each animal as it appeared on screen. A later add-on to the fact files was a curated Twitter feed. The outcome of the project was that the TV creators were more interested in the Twitter feed than being distracted from the program by extra information. SecondSync quickly changed its focus from TV audience to TV creators.

2. In the current market, there are 35 UK TV channels and 1 million tweets about TV on a daily basis. Compared to other social media outlets, Twitter is most commonly used based on immediacy to an event. It therefore offers rich data on audience behaviour patterns, enabling creators to predict behaviour around when audience are likely to tweet during a specific TV programme. This data allows TV creators and advertisers to inform their decisions around advertising campaigns and programming. However, there are issues around social data not representing a wide demographic.

3. Activity around celebrity tweets (especially Harry Styles) can have a significant impact on TV audience numbers, driving up number of viewers.

4. As well as collecting the data, SecondSync quickly realised they needed to offer consultancy services to advise producers, researchers, writers and advertisers how to read the data.  People often tweet negative comments about a show they are enjoying, SecondSync analysed the sentiment behind the tweet content. The company later moved away from sentiment analysis in favour of quantitative data in response to demand from the TV creators. 

5. Andy talked about how both people and luck played a big role in the development of SecondSync. Early on, Channel 4 signed up as the beta partner. This helped SecondSync to research how tweet volume correlates to audience size, what type of programme gets the most tweets, and to identify the user requirements. Luck meant that SecondSync were in the right place and the right time to articulate their idea to Twitter and Kantar, as well as find themselves an office with Aardman.

Since acquisition by Twitter in 2014, Andy and the rest of the team have been working on TV products for Twitter, with more to be revealed soon…