Facebook and Twitter are fighting for key roles in the worldwide television market, particularly TV advertising and pay-TV, as Internet-connected television makes TV into a social medium, says a report by research company Futurescape.

Futurescape publishes strategy reports on the business of social television. It is launching its latest title, Social TV: How Facebook, Twitter and connected television transform global TV advertising, pay-TV, EPGs and broadcasting.

This is the first critical appraisal of how the battle between the two major social networks over social TV is shaping twenty-first century television and challenging the TV industry.

The winner will take a dominant strategic position in socially-targeted TV advertising, pay-TV content recommendation, TV show marketing, next-generation EPGs and interactive viewing.

The television is already becoming a social device, as Google TV, Yahoo Connected TV, CE manufacturers and pay-TV operators race to connect TV sets to the Internet.

Internet TV apps enable viewers to access their social networks via the TV screen and to discuss TV shows on TV while they watch.

Viewers can also use social networks and apps on the TV to recommend TV shows or movies to family and friends. They can equally discover shows and movies from them.

This rise of social television particularly benefits the main social networking services, Facebook and Twitter, so that they are now rivals for multi-billion dollar segments of the international television market.

• Facebook aims to tap the $180bn worldwide TV ad market - Google TV and other connected TV systems will put Facebook and Twitter targeted ads on TV screens
• Global pay-TV, estimated at $250bn in 2014, needs social recommendation and discovery services because these encourage viewers to subscribe to more expensive packages and buy more video-on-demand - Facebook and Twitter are both major providers of social data
• Middleware and EPG providers similarly need social network data for recommendation and discovery - the European EPG market alone will be worth $555m by 2014
• Facebook and Twitter buzz affects TV ratings, while broadcasters that use the social networks for viewer engagement are effectively sharing their audiences with them
• The social networks know in real time how people react to TV programming - this is an essential supplement to Nielsen-type viewing data

This report maps out the emerging social TV landscape and analyses how the battle over social TV between the social networks, and other Internet companies such as Google, permanently transforms the TV market, as connected television arrives in our homes.