Category Archives: customer examples

customer examples, facebook, twitter

NCAA March Madness Most Social Moments – Powered by SnappyTV Social Volume

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This was one of the most unpredictable NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournaments ever with UConn and Kentucky piling up the upsets to reach last night’s championship game.  All of the unpredictability (and the big schools rising to the top) also contributed to make this the most social March Madness ever.

As we blogged about previously, the SnappyTV platform was tightly integrated into Turner Sports’ March Madness Live experience.  One of the key components they leveraged was our Social Volume product, which provides real-time data and visualizations that marry event video with social activity happening across the web and then lets you match up videos, GIFs and photos with those visualizations.

The SnappyTV Social Volume Product appeared beneath live video creating a live visualization of social activity about that game.

Using this data and clips shared in real-time on Facebook and Twitter via SnappyTV, here’s a look at the Top 5 Most Social Moments from this year’s March Madness tournament.

#5 Dayton upsets Syracuse in thrilling fashion! – 16,342 tweets/min

The University of Dayton Flyers reached the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1984 by defeating powerhouse Syracuse. The Flyers would win one more game before bowing out in the Elite Eight.

 

#4 Kentucky ends Wichita State’s perfect season in St. Louis! – 17,141 tweets/min

The Wichita St. Shockers were trying to become the first team to finish the season undefeated since the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers but fell prey to the Kentucky Wildcats’ Freshman-dominated team.  The Shockers’ dreams of an undefeated season ended abruptly in the Third Round proving doubters, who cited their easy schedule, right.

 

#3 Kentucky punches its ticket to the Elite 8! – 17,528 tweets/min

One of the most anticipated games of the tournament pitted Kentucky against in-state rival, and defending champion, Louisville.  The Cardinals, who had been the darling pick in brackets across the country, ran up against the rapidly maturing Wildcats and ultimately came up short.

 

#2 Kentucky drills a 3-pointer to take the lead with 2.6 seconds to go! – 18,112 tweets/min

One of the stars of the tournament was Kentucky’s Aaron Harrison who hit three last minute three pointers in tight games that ultimately tipped the tide for the Wildcats against Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin.  This cold-blooded three against Michigan sent Kentucky to the Final Four and sent the Wolverines home.

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Post by NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness.

 

#1 Mercer Dancing! – 56,887 tweets/min

The breakout star of the tournament was arguably a player who scored 0 points. How could that be you ask? Well Mercer’s Senior Guard, Kevin Canevari, created an internet sensation by performing the Nae Nae dance after the Bears’ stunning upset of Duke in the Second Round.  His moment illustrates just why March Madness is one of the most popular sporting events – because it creates human moments that resonate with sports fans and casual viewers alike.

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Post by NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness.

 

 

 

 

customer examples, facebook

Why Posting Video on Facebook Matters (Hint: You'll Double Your User Engagement)

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A recent study published by Quintly demonstrates that video is king when it comes to Facebook user engagement. According to the study, videos posted by Fan Pages received nearly twice the number of engagements as photos, the runner up in the study.

via Quintly

What’s more is that videos only comprise a paltry 3% of posts made by Fan Pages meaning there is a real dearth of video content being made available to social media managers for use in Facebook.

via Qunitly

Another important nugget in the recently released study is that questions do not receive a good amount of engagement, so the old best practice about prompting user interaction by asking a question does not seem to hold water when put into practice.

Key Takeaways

With Facebook investing more in video playback with new features like video auto-play and larger thumbnails, video is only going to continue to become more popular amongst Facebook users.  So the question becomes, how can I as a marketer or social media manager create more video inventory and ultimately drive more engagement amongst my fans?

Luckily SnappyTV can help with that.  Using our new Facebook Export tool, customers have started to publish content using the native Facebook Player from the SnappyTV Platform. Here are some recent examples:

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Post by NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness.

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Post by FOX Sports.

 

If you want to learn more about how SnappyTV can help with your video strategy on Facebook, get in touch with your SnappyTV account representative.

You can read more about this study here: http://www.quintly.com/blog/2014/03/data-analysis-which-facebook-post-type-rules-the-news-feed/

customer examples, facebook, twitter

March Madness 2014 + SnappyTV = The Future of TV?

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For the third consecutive year, SnappyTV has worked closely with Turner Sports on their March Madness social execution. This year, we are working with them on more fronts than ever including a deep in-app integration, social posts on Facebook and Twitter, and even helping their ad sales teams provide video affidavits to sponsors. What makes this app so unique is that the March Madness team has taken the best of the Second Screen experience and combined it with live streams to produce a single, unified experience that is like nothing seen before.

The feedback from users about the March Madness Live experience has been nothing short of phenomenal. Casual fans and tech industry luminaries alike are calling the experience the “Future of TV” and we can’t be more excited to be part of it.  We also encourage you to experience this live throughout the remainder of the NCAA tournament so you can experience this first hand.

 

In App Integration

SnappyTV’s technology has been deeply integrated into the March Madness Live app for iPhone, iPad, Android and Desktop. Users who watch games live (or even watching full game replays) have a SnappyTV generated Social Volume sound wave sitting below the main video player.  Culled from live Twitter Data, we provide the app with live Twitter statistics through our Timeline API, and their app, in turn, displays it to end users.

SnappyTV's Social Volume product shows users the current "loudness" of the social conversation around each game as it happens.

What’s more is that in addition to showing the game’s Social Volume, the March Madness Live team is also using our LiveCut Editor to curate instant video highlights, images and Tweets that appear along the sound wave.  As these assets are created (and approved by a social media manager) they appear instantly inside the experience where users can enjoy them and ultimately share them into social media.

Instant Video Highlights created using our LiveCut Editor are surfaced directly into the app, letting fans relive crucial moments and share them to their social networks.

Social Sharing to Twitter and Facebook

In addition to powering much of the social experience within the March Madness Live app, Turner Sports are also using us to post real-time highlights and our animated GIF-like Snap Reels to drive tune in and awareness of current tournament activity.

On Twitter, the team is using us as part of Twitter Amplify Campaigns with Infiniti and Coke bringing in new revenue by running these campaigns directly within Twitter as seen here:

and here:

The March Madness team is also using us to help drive tune in, using viral moments inside their Tweets and Facebook posts.

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Post by NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness.

 

When posting to Facebook, they are using our new Export to Facebook feature which allows you to publish MP4 files directly to your Fan Pages to take advantage of new Facebook Video features like auto-playing in the News Feed.

Bleacher Report – Live Game Coverage and Publishing to their Website

This year, we also started working with Bleacher Report, which is now a Turner Sports property.  Using our LiveCut Editor, the B/R team was including real-time highlights into their extremely popular TeamStream App.

Bleacher Report pushed live highlights directly into their Team Stream App.

Bleacher Report is also using our Ooyala connector to quickly publish clips to their website for use in articles and in their video library.

(See this on Bleacher Report)

Ad Sales Affidavits

Another unexpected, but brilliant use that the Turner team has gotten out of our platform is that their Ad Sales team is using us to provide affidavits to sponsors that their ad spots were executed on air.  Using SnappyTV for this has dramatically reduced the amount of time that their ad sales team has to spend on this activity so they can spend their time doing what they are best at – selling.

The Future is Here

We always love working with the Turner Sports team on March Madness.  They fully understand all of the various ways that our platform can help drive tune in, provide new ad inventory, and provide rapid efficiencies in producing video and other media types.  Moving video editing workflows into the cloud is what makes all of this possible because it results in huge gains in speed and opens up video editing, and the clips that are produced, to a much broader audience than what was ever possible before.

But what is more impressive is how the Turner Sports team has recognized that the line between the first screen and second screen has all but gone away. People want access to live video anywhere, anytime and on any device. And at the same time, they want to experience that video with all of the unique aspects that second screen apps have brought to the live TV watching experience. The March Madness team has proved that the future is here, and we’re just happy to be along for the ride.

customer examples

Catch All the Action from the NFL Combine

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The NFL has been live tweeting highlights from the combine in Indianapolis this week with a huge social response. The clips showing players “racing” during their various 40 yard runs through some slick technology that superimposes two video clips together (from a company called Simulcam) has been drawing the biggest response. NFL Network’s Rich Eisen even got in on the action with hilarious results, even sending him into infamy by trending worldwide on Twitter.

Take a look at some of the top highlights from the week – and take notes for your Fantasy Football draft coming up this fall.

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customer examples

NASCAR Launches New App with Instant Highlights

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We have been working closely with the NASCAR team for the past three seasons. Last year we worked on a Twitter Amplify campaign with them:

 

This year they wanted to try something new – to provide Sprint customers who download the NASCAR Mobile app with a unique Race Day experience by providing instant highlights of important moments along side leaderboards, social feeds and other live data. Using the SnappyTV LiveCut Editor, the NASCAR social media team clips up moments as they happen. Then using our Timeline API, these highlights are immediately surfaced in their iOS, Android, and Windows Apps.

NASCAR is also making these same clips available on desktop (sponsored by FedEx) for post-race consumption which can be viewed here: http://snpy.tv/1fL0xuk

Finally, NASCAR is using our Brightcove Video Cloud connector to publish selected clips to their Video CMS to be populated across their web properties and syndicated out to syndication partners.

What’s most exciting about this is that the NASCAR team seems to have fully grasped the true power of our platform. That we can power social, mobile and web initiatives at the speed of real-time resulting in higher engagement rates and built in virality driven by social media.

customer examples, product annoucements

Announcing the SnappyTV Audience Network

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SnappyTV has always at the leading bleeding edge of bringing video and social media together. Since our beginnings, we have been iterating on the idea of how we can bring great content together with the right users at the right time and in the right place.

Over time, we’ve been adding more and more integrations working with world-class partners and today, we’re please to announce the SnappyTV Audience Network, the premiere distribution platform for content owners to get real-time video out to the web and in front of as large of an audience as possible.

The SnappyTV Audience network lets you get real-time highlights to just about anywhere.
The SnappyTV Audience network lets you get real-time highlights to just about anywhere.

Working with premiere customers like the PGA, Pac-12 Enterprises, the CW and CNN has driven us to marry our unique, industry-leading real-time cloud-based editing capabilities with other leading platforms to create best-of-breed experiences for everyone to benefit from. Let’s walk through the various areas where we can help you get your real-time highlights in front of your audience while they are still buzzing about the crazy dunk, the surprise elimination, or the breaking news story.

Social Media
SnappyTV has integrated tightly with social media allowing our customers to live tweet highlights, broadcast live streams directly to fans in a Facebook feed, post hilarious captioned memes to Tumblr, and to create real-time breaking news stories using Storify. This is something our customers are doing everyday and with great success.

X Factor on SnappyTV
Using SnappyTV, the XFactor was able to live tweet important moments to their fans directly within Twitter

Export Clips to OVP & CMS
SnappyTV customers like Pac-12 Enterprises and the National Lacrosse League loved the powerful capabilities of our LiveCut Editor, but with investments in building audiences and infrastructure on top of other video platforms have worked closely with us to deliver workflow productivity improvements in getting content from live streams and over-the-air broadcasts to their web presences on Ooyala (Pac-12) and YouTube (National Lacrosse League). Using our tools, our customers can create highlights of content just after it happens, apply relevant metadata, and export the video to their CMS of choice getting content onto their channels in seconds, not days.

Export from the LiveCut Editor to YouTube, Brightcove, and Ooyala
Using the LiveCut Editor, real-time content can be pushed to OVPs like Brightcove, Ooyala, and YouTube seconds after they happen.

Mobile Notifications
SnappyTV customers have used our integrations with PushIO and Phizzle to push real-time highlights directly to fans via mobile devices in both a native app and SMS environment. Working with PushIO and the PGA, we were able to send fans real-time highlights of the 2012 Ryder Cup created in our LiveCut Editor directly to anyone who had the Ryder Cup iOS app installed. Our integration with Phizzle was used by FOX Sports North to allow fans to scan an on-screen QR Code or text a short code to get an SMS with instant highlights delivered to them.

Video Syndication & Distribution Sites
We have also done integrations with Video Syndication and Distributions sites like 5min video. Using our LiveCut Editor, TechCrunch is able to create clips of their conferences and live events in a fraction of the time it used to take.  In fact, using our technology, the TechCrunch team was able to edit every one of the 100+ Hackathon Presentations at TechCrunch Disrupt and have them posted online just a few minutes after the last presentation was over.  Then, once the clips were created, what was usually a manual upload process, where videos were uploaded 1-by-1 was replaced by an automatic integration in which clips surfaced in the 5min platform to be distributed on TechCrunch.com and other syndications sites like Metacafe, AOL.com, and Answers.com.

What This All Means
Online video is still experiencing explosive growth. And yet, what we’re learning is that not all video is created equal. The videos that garner the most attention are those that are able to reach their audience through as many platforms as possible. A platform in this case, can be a hardware platform like a phone or tablet, it could mean a social media platform like Twitter or Facebook, or even a video delivery platform like YouTube or your Ooyala-powered Web Site.

With SnappyTV, we let you maximize your video’s full potential by ensuring frictionless, near real-time viewing of live content. So the next time a breaking news story hits, or a half-court shot gets hit, or a fan favorite contestant gets eliminated, make sure that you’re running your video on SnappyTV. That way you can get that video in front of your audience while they are still buzzing, maximizing exposure, viewership and vitality by giving your viewers exactly what they are looking for where they are looking.

Want to learn more about SnappyTV? Get in touch and see it in action!

customer examples, product annoucements

Inauguration Day with CNN

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It was an exciting day today at SnappyTV. Working closely with the CNN team, we provided viewers on CNN.com with the ability to instantly share highlights from President Obama’s Inauguration festivities directly from the CNN homepage. If you watched the broadcast live on CNN’s homepage, you might have noticed a carousel of clips just beneath their live player.

SnappyTV Live Highlights Companion Widget
The SnappyTV Live Highlights Companion Widget in action on CNN.com

Here’s how it worked. CNN editors were in our LiveCut Editor, as important moments happened, they would cut a clip in real-time, add a caption and publish it out to the carousel. Users who were already engaged with the live stream would see the new clip pop in and could watch the real-time highlight, share it to Twitter and Facebook, or embed it on a blog or website. Take a look at the experience:


(excuse the choppy video, thats due to the screen capture software I was using)

What’s more is that once clips were shared into Twitter and Facebook, or embedded on websites, they included our unique Tune-In Banner, that includes a branding, a call to action and a customizable URL click-through that was used to point highlight viewers within social to click and watch the remainder of the live stream on CNN’s website.

Drive Tune In from Social Media with SnappyTV Tune-In Banners
SnappyTV Tune-In Banners allows you to drive viewership from social media back to your live streaming event.

Why this matters to you
The most exciting thing about this for SnappyTV is that we are now able to augment the real-time highlights we’ve always been able to produce in the LiveCut Editor and combine it with a Live Streaming Companion widget that you can use to provide the live highlight capability directly to viewers of ANY live stream. Whether you are using UStream, Livestream, YouTube Live, or any other live streaming service (homegrown or off the shelf), you can now use our Live Streaming Companion widget to provide your viewers with instant, bite-sized clips that they can instantly share.

What we’ve seen so far is that by empowering your viewers with instant highlights can lead to some real buzz on social media about your live event, and ultimately drive eyes back to the live event directly impacting your bottom line and helping you get your message out to as wide an audience as possible.

SnappyTV is real-time, social video, and we’ve demonstrated once again, how we live up to that claim. Want to learn more about SnappyTV? Get in touch and see it in action!