• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, June 25, 2014

The bond between traditional TV networks and social platforms got a little tighter, this week. 

NBC’s “Today” and Discovery’s “Street Outlaws” each integrated their operations more closely with Facebook with the help of social marketing firm Spredfast.

Starting this week, The Today Show’s “Orange Room” will feature trending topics live on an interactive touch-screen, powered by real-time data from Facebook. Viewers can expect so see news anchor Carson Daly swiping through posts on the trending feed and digging through various stories and topics.

For the new season of “Street Outlaws” -- Discovery’s look inside Oklahoma City’s street racing scene -- producers will be relying on Facebook to power a weekly live-vote, which will encourage views to pick their favorite outlaws.

The efforts were made possible by Spredfast’s participation in Facebook’s Public Content Solutions. Facebook also made such integrations easier after releasing new media APIs, in April.

Bob Morgan, Facebook’s partner engineer manager, credited Spredfast’s Mass Relevance product line with making the integrations possible.  Founded as an independent social marketing firm -- with expertise in the creation of social experiences across digital channels -- Mass Relevance merged with Spredfast in April.

Combined, the firms claim about 600 clients, north of 1 billion social connections across 84 countries, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 billion monthly impressions.

Spredfast clients include AT&T, Caterpillar, Starbucks, T. Rowe Price, Whole Foods and Warner Brothers. Mass Relevance has worked with Pepsi, Campbell’s, GE, Target, Walgreens and Microsoft, among other top-tier brands.

This year, advertisers are expected to pump nearly $12 billion into social networks around the world, according to eMarketer. That’s 25% more than marketers spent on social last year.