Are Telenovelas missing out on using hashtags to create conversation?

By Sergio Leiva

At one of the most interesting talks I had the pleasure to attend last week at SXSW, How Twitter has changed the way we watch TV, most of what was being used as examples came from the american TV market. However, one of things that resonated the most with me and that left me thinking about how we are approaching our digital strategies in Latin America is the fact that, according to the speaker, sports, reality TV, dramas and large one-time events are the biggest drivers of social interaction on Twitter.
If you stop to think about these four genres for a moment, you might realize that telenovelas are a mix of almost all of them (leaving only sports out), and being especially heavy on the drama and the one-time nature of its serial content.

At the talk, we were shown examples like The Walking dead or the much talked about House of Cards. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Telenovelas might just be missing out on something huge by not including hashtags or other ways to create conversation around their content.
Those of us who’ve had the pleasure of growing up with telenovelas, know that every episode (just as it happens with Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead) is a mix of drama and “can’t-wait-to-see-what-happens-next” kind of content.

What would happen if we were not only creating hashtags for our telenovelas, but also letting our audiences decide what will happen to the villain at the end of the story? (In any case, we all know the evil step-mother will either end up dead, reformed or in the loony-bin).
What if we were to create twitter handles for each of the main characters and have them give us clues as to what will happen to them or simply to enable conversation with the audience?
Telenovelas seem to me like the perfect conversation sparker that no one wants to admit to watching but that could be a goldmine in terms of interaction over different social platforms like Twitter.

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Ouya Keynote - Kind of disruptive

Julie Uhrman, founder and CEO of Ouya sat down with The Verge Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky to discuss the company’s enormously successful Kickstarter campaign (raising $8.5M) and their vision to disrupt the video game industry, with crazy affordable prices and an Android-based OS that lowers the barriers for development. 

Ouya promises to make gaming in the living room as accessible as smartphones have made it everywhere else. Ouya isn’t just a console, it’s a platform that is based on the Android OS, which means it’s much easier for independent developers to make games for than Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo consoles. Less barriers for development mean more titles for casual to hardcore gamers, at cheaper price points. 

By expanding types of games beyond hardcore blockbuster titles like Modern Warfare 3 at a $60 a pop, Ouya hopes to bring casual gaming back to the living room for gamers of all skill levels.  This was a point that Uhrman stressed most throughout the discussion. Casual, light hearted games, like Angry Birds, should not be relegated to tiny screens. We should bring it back to the days where we all played Tetris in the living room together. 

Ouya isn’t trying to dethrone the 3 major consoles, yet. They position themselves as an additive device with games that major consoles won’t have, but you’ll still need the majors for the blockbuster titles that require more powerful hardware. 

The device will be distributed to Kickstarter backers in May and be in big box stores this summer for $99. 

That said, with that kind of vision and accessibility, one would think that the talk would have been a smash hit with the crowd of developers, gamers, and futurists. But reviews were definitely mixed as Uhrman didn’t go much beyond their vision in the Kickstarter campaign and some updates on product development. 

Still regardless of how the talk went, you’d be hard pressed to find any person who played a pre-PS2 console, who isn’t excited for Ouya. 

The gaming industry has matured, and like the film and music business, it’s time to lower the barriers for distribution and discovery of great content.