Twitter Partners with Comcast, Social Network Turns TV-watching Service

Twitter , through its strategic partnership with Comcast, will deliver a TV-watching service to its users later this fall.

In the recent years, Twitter has exhausted almost all efforts to enter the television industry. Its partnership with the biggest pay-TV provider in the United States, Comcast, is a step forward to making it happen.

Sam Schwartz, Comcast’s chief business development officer, told AllThingsD , “We want to make the conversation in Twitter lead to consumption.”

Tweets from various NBCUniversal television shows will be incorporated with a “See It” button beginning November. The “See It” button will give users more information about the shows such as America’s Got Talent, The Biggest Loser, Deception, etc. when clicked. Moreover, Twitter users who also subscribe to Comcast pay-TV will also be able to watch the show directly from their PCs or smartphone and even record it.

However, Comcast says that the changes will take place incrementally and before seeing the “See It” button, Twitter users will be asked to link their account to the official NBCUniversal Web pages.

Schwartz said the two companies should be able to make the “See It” button appear using hashtags soon.

According to Schwartz, the plan, which aims to entice other pay-TV providers, networks and other Web properties in the project, was originally from Comcast.

Tying up with Twitter is just the start. However, the agreement has an “Amplify” advertising deal with Twitter, as well. In this deal, Twitter and NBCUniversal will market ads against short video clips from some shows.

If Twitter and Comcast’s strategy works out fine as planned, it will be the start of great business ventures for both of them. Twitter and Comcast can make more profit out of it.

The downside is that Twitter has only about 50 million active users – a number that is not big enough to affect TV ratings in the end.