Live comments, Twitter and moderation

Live comments and chat are core to ShowCaster - they provide interactivity and engage the audience as part of the show.

Live comment moderation

ShowCaster is built for professional broadcasting and publishing environments - and therefore offers comprehensive, multi-layer moderation for viewer comments / chat.

In a simple configuration all comments will go straight to all viewers - as well as being displayed on the ShowCaster broadcaster screen for the cast to discuss.

Moderation

Moderation is optional - you may choose to allow all comments to go straight to all viewers, however this is not recommended for large shows (thousands of concurrent viewers).

When setting up a show the administrator selects the levels of moderation required, for example a web TV show may have:

• Level 1 - screening profanity / abuse etc.
• Level 2 - producer determining which comments should be put to the cast
• Level 3 - cast determining which comments they wish to answer

Moderators are also able to delete messages after they have been sent to viewers - in the event that a mistake is made.

Twitter integration

As well as receiving comments directly using ShowCaster’s interactive functionality, Tweets can be integrated. For a moderated show this will mean that Tweets will go through the standard moderation process.

Twitter integration is configured for each show - using up to three hash tags (eg. #showcastertv) or @ tags (eg. @orcadigital). You are not required to authorise your Twitter account with ShowCaster as it uses Twitter’s public Search API - returning the same results as a public Twitter search.  Twitter applies its own logic to determine which results to return - meaning that not all Tweets are guaranteed to appear, as per a public search on Twitter.

Tweets are displayed with a Twitter logo next to them, so that viewers and moderators can distinguish them from other questions and comments.