Social media and television are becoming more and more intertwined. In the UK a Twitter storm accompanies shows like The X Factor: every weekend keywords related to the show occupy half of Twitter's global trending topics and about 5% of worldwide tweets mention the finalists' or judges' names. The much-talked about Project Canvas is also planning to include social content-sharing features as well as integrating Twitter. But in general, TV has been rather slow in integrating social media.

Gary Hayes, formerly a senior development producer for the BBC and now working in Sydney, is an expert on the field. Recently, he published 20 best solutions for social TV.

In your essay you asked if social media will give the tottering broadcast giant a much-needed injection in the arm, or if this is going to be another doomed hybrid. But in general, why is it important for television to get into social media?

People on a branded TV streaming page, logged in with their Twitter account and enthusing about a show, is indeed a powerful trend. The generic 'slightly-interested-on-average' audience become highly passionate about the programming they are watching and draw new audiences from their follower community to the show.

However, TV has been taking phone calls and SMS comments for years; the big difference here is the conversation has now a bigger momentum and energy outside the show than when it was moderated in the past.

What is the most important thing that broadcasters need to understand?

Most broadcasters and programme-makers are really missing a trick in not having a presence in the real-time discussion that surrounds "their" show - they don't need to control the conversation, they just need to be a voice of "the creator" or represent the production.

This serves the purposes of making the community around the discussion feel like it has some agency, that it can somehow influence the show in future but also gives a human voice to sometimes over-produced TV.

A fundamental problem of commenting on a video is that you have to decide whether to comment on the whole video, or a certain moment – and this means that the comment vanishes with the video going forward. Do we need to think of different ways to visualise and sort comments?

There have been quite a few research projects, some even by the BBC, asking the question of what happens when a linear show has a mix of index points and threads below as it plays, and it is up to the user to stop and read longer threads.

At the moment, YouTube is really getting people used to annotated video in a rather crude way. What works best is obviously when subtitle encourages you to pause and read and partly view the show as it continues.

But in principle, there is no better way for broadcasters to prepare for the future than by millions of comments and specific detailed points to be used to richly make video truly searchable.

The hardest part: what will motivate richer comments? A solution might be the voting of others, thereby making its place higher in the order as you watch.

We always think of social media being adapted into television. What about the other way round: wouldn't that be more promising?

When TV moves onto the PC or mobile it changes. The big difference to when it is "on the box" is the fact it is live, often presenter-driven and has a real-time connection with viewers. Services like UStream, Qik or JustinTV are already a few years down the road here.

What we really need to see is that broadcasters being much more active in pulling the conversation around their live TV streams on the web.

At the moment it is mostly entertainment programmes and reality TV shows that are getting social. What about other formats: do you see a chance there as well?

Shows such as Lost, Heroes, FastForward, Regenesis, Fallen and so on are where we see a more "dramatic" marriage of TV and social media. Here the social networks create a transmedia web around the show but the show itself is relatively untouched by all the activity – it is a part of it.

In your eyes, what is the biggest problem with linking television and social media?

There are a few hurdles to overcome. TV still operates as an ivory tower, collecting high-quality content then pumping it out in one direction.

The desire to connect to an audience needs to be extremely strong for the people and technical resources to be allocated in the various TV and new media departments. The biggest of which is people to engage in conversation and be trusted to do so without the lawyers stamping it out.

Another hurdle of course is standardisation of advanced TV systems. Having a browser built into TV sets and with the open APIs of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc will mean web-originated services have won the battle against proprietary interactive TV such as OpenTV or IPTV services. Currently web browsers are built into around 15% of TVs in the US or 6m sets, and in 2014 it is expected to be up to 70% according to ABI Research.

Gary Hayes publishes at PersonalizedMedia and will speak at The Social TV Forum Europe in London on 16 March 2010.