TGIF!
Here’s what happened, This Week in Realtime Media:
The Second GOP Debate
It was another huge night in politics on Wednesday, as CNN hosted the second Republican debate for the 2016 race to the White House.
While playing GOP debate bingo, we stayed up late to track the conversations and reporting of the debate, gathering a ton of realtime insights and data.
Some highlights?
From Donald Trump telling Rand Paul he doesn’t belong on the debate stage, to Jeb Bush defending his brother’s presidency, here is what the largest spikes in media mentions looked like, and what caused each:
As seen above, mentions of Carly Fiorina spiked when she stated, “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said [about my face].” Prior to that moment, only Senator Ted Cruz had a momentary margin over Trump, who dominated the conversation throughout debate night.
Watch what happens on the map below – in realtime – as Fiorna made Donald Trump’s Twitter mentions diminish (highlight to tweet):
Periscope Breaks Media Boundaries
Periscope is being intelligently used to shed light on the Syrian crisis, and to share stories with viewers around the world. Paul Ronzheimer, a German journalist, began using the app to capture unedited, live footage of his travels with a group of Syrian refugees from the Greek island of Kos across Europe (follow Paul on Twitter/Periscope).
Before Ronzheimer began sharing his travels, he had a mere 1,500 Periscope followers. This number has since jumped to over 33,000, with one of his videos played and replayed more than 90,000 times. His broadcasts are usually centered around individual refugees, with several making regular appearances to discuss their experience.
Zignal Labs found that his first tweet about Periscoping with the refugees dates back to August…
LIVE auf #Periscope: On the road with syrian refugees https://t.co/pjcKTEG5B6
— Paul Ronzheimer (@ronzheimer) August 18, 2015
BUT, news of the video streams did not break until September 14:
How Bild used the Periscope app to ‘get inside’ the Syrian refugees story http://t.co/uJ1m9ZiHln — The Guardian (@guardian) September 13, 2015
This begs the question, just how much is Periscope revolutionizing the news industry with instant, raw footage?
Possibly quite a bit.
Several people are taking to social media to point out how the app might be changing the world’s view on issues like the crisis in Syria, as audiences are witnessing real accounts with refugees:
Could @PercisopeCo help change the world view of this issue by witnessing it with refugees? #Syria #Refugee http://t.co/FCmK0lsSCP
— Angela LeBrun (@Angela4design) September 14, 2015
How personalization & @periscopeco are helping tell Syrian refugee stories, focusing on ppl vs. numbers http://t.co/A99uz0hhGj #storytelling
— Julie Dixon (@jdldixon) September 14, 2015
In fact, #ChangeTheWorld is even hashtag that people are using on social to discuss the matter, especially when they’re sharing links to their Periscope stream:
#syria refugee take it to anotha level. #changetheworld https://t.co/2M9HVxCM3F — Rafee Jajou (@RealRafee) September 5, 2015
The Dislike Button is Coming!
After countless yearnings for a thumbs down option on Facebook, Zuck himself confirmed the social network will soon feature a ‘Dislike’ button. “We have an idea that we’re going to be ready to test soon, and depending on how that does, we’ll roll it out more broadly,” the CEO stated, at a townhall meeting on Tuesday afternoon. This announcement spread like wildfire across several media outlets:
The company’s hesitation in creating dislikes stems from the unintentional promotion of negative sentiment among Facebook users. It is also likely a reaction to being compared to Reddit, which is known for it’s upvoting and downvoting system. However, Zuckerberg mentioned that he now thinks users should be able to “express empathy” on news that might be unfavorable.
In the world of content marketing, anyone with a role in social media is concerned about how the dislike feature will affect any content that is posted. We collected some of the top mentions around the new feature, and many discuss the effect it will have on the marketing community:
While it will certainly be “scary” for marketers to have dislikes of their posts on display, success (or lack of success) on Facebook should be more easily measured, and the appropriate action can then be taken in determining which content is most suitable for respective channels.
Of course, we may all soon expect more people to share the bad news and challenges in their lives, with this new “button” of sympathy.
Accessing NYFW with Your Favorite Apps
Many people use the Snapchat and Uber mobile applications on a daily basis. A few New York Fashion Week participants decided to capitalize on such frequent behavior and created promotions around use of these apps. In turn, members of the general public could participate in the retail industry’s most glamorous week.
This year, Alexander Wang created a brand new Snapchat account, which was announced on Instagram:
Introducing the official #AlexanderWang #Snapchat account. Follow “AlexanderWangNY” for behind the scenes access to AW events & more surprises. Stay tuned…
A photo posted by ALEXANDER WANG (@alexanderwangny) on
Sep 7, 2015 at 7:48am PDT
Once people logged into Snapchat and hit follow, an invitation appeared in a Snapchat video to win a prize if they showed the snap at the door of one of their NYFW events. Only ten people were eligible to win, and before the event even kicked off, the line outside stretched down the block early.
Additionally, retailer Rag and Bone teamed up with Uber to provide free access to a secret runway show. From 5:30 to 7:30 on Sunday evening, fashionistas could open their Uber apps to find a “Runway” option within the car-hailing menu. The select few who found the option in their app would have a car sent to them, and take them to the secret shows in Brooklyn.
As seen in our word cloud, these promotions sparked conversations about Uber throughout the NYFW sphere.
With many deeming these promotions to be brilliant:
Can we just discuss how incredible @rag_bone and @Uber‘s collaboration was yesterday? #GoodPR
— laurenpolyak (@LAURPOLY) September 15, 2015
Could this be a new frontier of partnerships (or hijackings) between tech companies and popular events?
New Windows 10 Devices
Move over iPhone 6S, and make room for Microsoft. The Redmond-based software giant has spent the summer focusing on a new operating system is gearing up to release a new line of hardware products:
Watch it live on October 6. #Windows10devices http://t.co/LkBWMQVBC7 pic.twitter.com/H1QKMB42La — Microsoft (@Microsoft) September 14, 2015
Specifics are yet to be unveiled, but an official announcement will be made at a New York event on October 6. Here, the company is widely expected to announce a new Surface Pro 4, two Lumia smartphones, and possibly even a new wearable and an update to its existing Microsoft Band smartwatch. People are taking to Twitter to send in their requests….
@Microsoft plz add CV L1520 in the 1st wave of windows10 for phones official release.plz dont hurt ur truefans @LumiaHelp @Lumia
— ShInE vAsUdEvAn (@shinevasudevan) September 14, 2015
I’d love a new @surface Pro 4 announcement, please. http://t.co/FdIkWVT0d8 — Noah Bradley (@noahbradley) September 15, 2015
Pink Gold, PLEASE, Pink Gold!!! http://t.co/8EOt1Voe3M — Clark Butler (@Clarkb) September 15, 2015
And speculation on device specifications are popping up all over the media spectrum:
As we did with the Apple keynote, we will surely monitor the conversation around Windows 10 Devices as the event is happening. Stay tuned!
That’s all for #TWIRM! Come back next week for more #realtime headlines and insights.
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