Microsoft Pulse Gives Viewers Of State Of The Union Address A Voice

Microsoft Pulse has partnered with CNN, MSNBC, NBC Universo and Telemundo to enable live audience participation during President Obama’s final State of the Union (SOTU) address Tuesday night.

The move marks the first implementation of the Azure-powered Pulse by Spanish-language stations Telemundo and NBC Universo, and the fourth consecutive year a major news network has used Pulse to drive user engagement and audience insights during the SOTU address.

It will allow viewers to participate in and give real-time feedback to President Obama's final address, says Dritan Nesho, director of technology and civic engagement at Microsoft.

Viewers will have an option to vote on whether they agree or disagree with what the president has to say through the tap of the screen or the click of the mouse on any smartphone, tablet, or PC. Pulse allows participants to vote every five seconds, and as often as they want. 

Microsoft will share the results of the nation’s sentiment in real-time during the live broadcast by CNN and NBC Universo, and online through their digital live streams by MSNBC and Telemundo.

A new social annotations feature also rolls out this week, allowing producers to select specific points, or periods of time, during a speech or in an event and provide commentary about what the audience is seeing or responding to.

Viewers can share and comment on an annotation through social media, and producers can extract the annotation data through a snapshot API and push it into any graphics or business intelligence platforms to do their own analysis and on-air visualizations.

Pulse also now integrates with multiple communications products within the Microsoft family such as Azure Media Services, so broadcasters can push video content to all viewers’ second screens during a live program or commercial breaks, synchronized with TV programming or advertising, allowing for an additional revenue stream.

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