NY Video Meetup: Jersey Shore, Kendra and 9/11 (#NYVM)

CTO Eric Hoffert (at podium) explains Thwapr with SVP Leigh Newsome (credit: Lauren Keyson)

The August New York Video Meetup held last night at AOL’s headquarters featured three presentations: a real time television social guide, a mobile video sharing service for branded content, and a first look at a new 9/11 iPad app. Built in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, SocialGuide is an intelligent social TV recognition system that looks at all the social activity that happening around live linear TV. Founder Sean Casey gave two examples: “Right now there are thousands of people all over the country talking about the Real Madrid versus Barcelona Game and also talking about America’s Got Talent. With every show there is a live audience, and a growing percentage of that live audience is being social around TV.”

What did he say was the biggest show for social viewing? Jersey Shore, the number one show on MTV. Casey said, “Hundreds of thousands of people were being social about the show while the show was airing. They were mostly on Twitter saying they were watching the show or talking to cast members or talking to their friends.”

Casey also said that SocialGuide was the only company in the space that captures the live social interaction as it happens. “There are other companies doing check-in, but we’re going to where the social conversation is actually happening. In the last six months we’ve captured 103 million social TV comments from 10 million people and matched them to over 24,000 unique TV shows.”

Leigh Newsome, SVP of Thwapr, talked about his company’s mobile video solution that enables brands to mobilize, socialize and monetize their content. “We reach about 200 million video enabled phones in the US and Canada. And we provide a branded experience with that so it differentiates a lot of companies in mobile video, and you don’t need an app to receive content through our platform. For instance, sports fans will receive content from our client the NFL Miami Dolphins, and this content does not have our name on it. The team puts their name and their identity on it.”

“Most of our stuff is generated by brands,” explained Bruce Goldstein, founder and CEO. “But we did have one occasion the other day. There is an ex-Playboy bunny named Kendra who is married to NFL star Hank Baskett, and they’re using us through ViewMe, a company we sell our service. They sent me a clip of what they are doing, which is posting little clips to the social networks of their kid running around. I’m saying to myself, ‘Who’s going to watch this thing?’ — and inside of about 10 minutes there were 30,000 people who had viewed that video.

“It just shows the power of original content when shared to a specific network,” Goldstein continued. “Who would want to watch this little kid running around pushing a carriage? Our premise from the beginning has been that we don’t ever want the user to ever have to think about downloading – or doing anything that would indicate a hurdle for them to view content that somebody wants them to see. There is no app required at all – we just want to give it the old ‘Boom, it works!’ philosophy.”

The final presenter was NY Video’s own co-organizer, Steve Rosenbaum. He demoed his own two-day old app called The 9/11 Memorial, Past, Present and Future that will be live in the Apple App Store on Sept 1 and free through Sept. 11. “The tag line is ‘Hold History in Your Hands,’” he said. “It’s for all the people that are not going to be able to get to the memorial when it opens. It’s a tour; it’s the opportunity to see what was built and how it was built and you meet the architect and you see the names. It’s pretty emotional.”

[Editor's Note: Social Guide is a client of Trylon SMR, owned by Trylon Communications, Inc., the parent company of NY Convergence]