For Broadcast December 02, 2010

Recently I was sent the results of a survey from Value Partners about Generation Z - the so-called ‘digital natives’ who have no experience of the world before the internet. It concluded that for them, being “connected” to the web and things like Facebook either on their PC or on their mobile was much more important than watching TV. In fact, only 3% of them said that the TV was a must-have device, versus 51% who said their PC was a must-have and 43% their mobile.

These 16 to 24 year-olds look anti-TV when contrasted with the overall UK population, 50% of whom say TV is the media activity they would miss the most, according to Ofcom. Will this anti-couch-potato stance persist as these kids get older, start commuting to a job and have a family? Won’t sloth in front of the big screen set in, while Facebook status updates fade out?

It’s too early to know. We’ll have to watch them as they get into the workplace to see if interactive exhaustion seeps in, but I have a feeling that their preadult behaviour won’t change that much.

I think they won’t even see communication and entertainment as different pastimes at all, because updating your Facebook status is both. In fact, the lines between what is a PC activity and what is a TV activity are blurring. As more TVs are web-connected, either through their own ethernet connection or a connected TV set top box, like the ones being developed by YouView and Google TV, this will only pick up pace.

Facebook and Twitter could end up on the TV screen, but at a Guardian debate last week on the future of TV, Facebook director of partnerships Christian Hernandez said he didn’t envisage people trying to update their status using a TV remote. Instead, he thinks the big opportunity for broadcasters is to leverage the communities that social networks like Facebook create and integrate them into television.

Some 2.2 million people “like” The X Factor’s Facebook page, and the show typically gets a million status updates per show. This is an example of how ITV is using a social network to drive interest and viewership of the TV show - but it will be thinking of ways to make that relationship deeper. Channel 4’s Million Pound Drop has on-air calls to play the game on its site and via Facebook, and more than 120,000 people do during each episode.

Of course, the million-pound question is how to monetise these social network communities. Hernandez admitted that this is a work in progress and called for more experimentation by broadcasters and brands. He also coined the phase “social commerce” whereby content (like a TV show) triggers a recommendation and, hopefully, a purchase of something related to that content, perhaps something as straightforward as buying the cute sweater worn by a character on Glee. Not my taste, but you get the idea.

One thing that seems clearer is how social networks can become recommendation engines for TV. Faced with hundreds of channels, would you use an EPG or a clickable friend’s recommendation? I am stunned at how much of my own media consumption (mostly news and information) I now get through social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Linked In - and I am certainly not in Generation Z.