Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest was the most interactive yet, fueled by a social media strategy lifted right out of Barack Obama’s campaign playbook. Web page views between January 1 and May 19 hit 70.1 million from last year’s nine million, and video views grew from 12 million to 31.9 million, Switzerland-based European Broadcasting Union (EBU) interactive TV head Nicoletta Iacobacci revealed to paidContent:UK. The uptick is “not just impressive, it’s scary”, Iacobacci joked, as she gave us the online lo-down from this year’s competition in Moscow - next year, Obama’s learnings will be joined by TV widgets and more mobile…

Having noticed real-time Twitter discussion build around last year’s Belgrade contest, this time Iacobacci embraced the microblog service, feeding “#eurovision” tweets beside the online videocast. “This time, we were trying to do something similar to what Obama did in the election with Facebook, but we actually did it with Twitter.” The resulting social media engagement was “pretty strong”, Iacobacci said, proving to be YouTube’s biggest hit the morning after and building 40,000 Facebook followers.

Solicited on-screen, #eurovision messages topped out Twitter’s trend list during the event, making for a simultaneous and continent-wide shared viewing experience - but wasn’t feeding in the world’s thoughts risky? “With new technology, sometimes you have to push it and take a little risk,” said the former RAI producer and interactive director, who used a 12-strong team in Moscow. “We were very aware of the risk - we had a fantastic team of dedicated staff who work with us when the Eurovision was on to moderate it - if there was something major, we would take action.”

—Bypassing TV to find audience: In video, Iaccobacci remedied her native Italy’s 12-year-long Eurovision boycott by striking a one-of-a-kind, non-TV syndication deal: “We allowed La Reppublica, the most popular online paper, to embed our live streaming in their blog. Italy is the only country not taking party in the Eurovision Song Contest - being an Italian, it’s my responsibility to convince RAI to bring it back. It’s one of the biggest entertainment shows in the world - it’s really a pity Italy doesn’t participate.”

—Features around the continent: Eurovision.tv itself was most popular in Holland, Belgium, Estonia and Cyprus, with eastern Europe lagging behind on web hits. On red-button interactive, the BBC scrolled multi-lingual lyrics in a ticker - but Iacobacci said this was only possible in the UK, where iTV uses a different standard. Iacobacci: “The Eurovision Song Contest is a fantastic platform to try out new technologies and new applications. Why? Because the fans and the community is already there and very strong and very cohesive. We had some minor glitches as usual - we had a little glitch in the middle of the streaming where we got a satellite stream from a partner’s local feed, not the international stream. If you try something new, you have to foresee minor glitches - but we didn’t have big problems.”

—Winning entry taking iTunes by storm: EurovisionDownloadShop.tv may be offering the 42 competitors’ tracks at €0.99 each, but winner Alexander Rybak’s Fairytale quickly rocketed to the top of iTunes Store’s chart in several countries, reaching three in the UK. “It’s very pleasing,” Iacobacci said. “I have to say that, being immersed in the press in Moscow, every time the Norway song was performed, there was big applause.”

—Next year - bigger and better: After inviting Obama’s digital strategist Joe Rospars to keynote a summit ahead of Saturday’s competition, Iacobacci plans even more grassroots community for Oslo 2010: “He taught us a lot of things and I really want to apply this strategy so that the viewer is not only a recipient, but also part of an interactive community. We are already starting to develop a strong strategy encompassing all the social media activities.”

Eurovision also hopes to develop a widget for TV gadget platforms like Yahoo’s, offering online content feeds. Iacobacci says she foresaw this kind of interactive TV in 1987, when she was amongst the first students in the US to gain a Masters in computer graphics: “Finally, we can do it after 20 years.” It does rather offer the tantalising possibility of on-screen #Eurovision tweets, but Iacobacci isn’t convinced text typing is realistic for the telly - live viewer input is more likely to come from on-the-sofa laptops.

Eurovision debuted its first iPhone app this year but, like the website, it was limited to English - next year, mobile and other languages, will play a bigger part. “The strategy was designed to handle the same RSS feed for both applications - web mobile and the iPhone. We did it very late but at least but we placed the basis to do it for next year. Next year, it is going to be well implemented to provide an adequate feed in local language - a real European application.”