Users of Facebook, later this summer, will be reminded about NBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games in London. And viewers of NBC’s coverage, at the same time, will be nudged to talk about the Games on Facebook.
The virtuous circle is part of a collaboration, to be announced Wednesday, between NBCUniversal’s NBC Olympics division and Facebook, the social networking Web site.
Data from Facebook will inform television coverage on NBC and on the other channels that will carry portions of the Summer Games starting on July 27. The specific uses will vary, but there will be a “Facebook Talk Meter” occasionally shown on TV to reflect what is being said online.
“We know that a social conversation will surround the Olympics,” said Gary Zenkel, the president of NBC Olympics. The work with Facebook, he added, is part of the division’s plan to listen and to talk back.
The connections between television and social media have come a long way since 2008, when the world last gathered for a Summer Olympics. Then, Facebook had 100 million users; now, it is said to have 900 million. In the intervening years, the notion of a “second screen” — the TV being the first, the computer or phone being the second — has been commercialized; it’s normal now for TV shows to encourage viewers to chat online about the show while watching it.
Even without encouragement, some viewers are sure to be doing it anyway as the two mediums, TV and the Web, continue to inch closer and closer.
“Facebook has the attention of a large portion of the American audience,” particularly among younger demographics, Mr. Zenkel said in a telephone interview from London. He portrayed the Facebook collaboration as a piece of “our continuing efforts to reassemble the audience” that has fragmented in countless ways in recent decades.
Facebook and NBC Olympics executives said the arrangement was not an advertising deal, and they indicated that no money was changing hands. (NBC does not expect its Olympic broadcasts to turn a profit this year.) In effect, the companies will be marketing each other’s products, possibly encouraging even more simultaneous viewing and chatting.
“It’s terrific exposure,” said Andy Mitchell, a former executive at CNN who now manages partnerships at Facebook.
On Facebook, the NBC Olympics page will be frequently updated with what the companies call “exclusive content” for fans only, a common marketing maneuver. Fans will be able to let Facebook friends know that they are watching videos and reading articles on the network’s Olympics Web site, possibly encouraging more viewing and reading by their friends.
NBC will be streaming every Olympic event this summer on its Web site, though users will have to verify that they subscribe to a participating cable or satellite provider. It will add up to thousands of hours — a veritable hurdle for people who are trying to figure out what to watch. With that in mind, the ability to share on Facebook will be “a great way to discover new games, athletes and events,” Mr. Mitchell said.
Perhaps the more intriguing part of the partnership, for traditional television viewers, involves Facebook’s data-crunching about user conversations related to the Olympics. With the assistance of a small team of Facebook staff members in London, “NBC is going to turn that data into stories,” Mr. Mitchell said.
The television segments with the “Talk Meter” inspired by social media chatter will be shown in prime time and at other times of the day. “We think it will be very interesting and informative for our audience to let them know, from time to time, what is hot and what people are talking about” online, Mr. Zenkel said.
The prime-time broadcast on NBC will also promote a daily poll on Facebook about the Olympics. With tens of millions of viewers watching each night, the broadcast is some of the most valuable real estate on television. Mr. Zenkel said that the Facebook integration would come on “when the information warrants it and when it is compelling.”
There is a danger, of course, in talking about Facebook just for the sake of Facebook. But as many viewers (not to mention many television executives) have discovered over the last few years, Web sites like Facebook and Twitter can turn solitary viewing into something akin to a communal experience. Nielsen studies have shown that nearly half of tablet computer owners and smartphone owners use their devices while watching television daily. Checking sports scores is one of the top uses for both groups.
Online chatter around TV events is a trend most closely associated with Twitter, a smaller Facebook competitor. Twitter has worked with a variety of television networks to amplify the “second screen” behavior of users and viewers. In the spring, the company announced a multiyear collaboration with one of NBCUniversal’s competitors, ESPN, around major sporting events like the N.B.A. Finals.
NBC has not announced a deal with Twitter around its Olympics telecasts, but it is likely to do so before the Games start. In 2010, when the network televised the Winter Games in Vancouver, it introduced something it called a “Twitter Tracker” that visualized Twitter messages about the events. The tracker will be back this time, Mr. Zenkel said. And one can only imagine how many more messages there will be.
