PBS NewsHour has used Snappy TV to ‘snap’ video of the broadcast and live news as it happens, making video ready to be shared almost instantly. The service is an interesting response to the social sharing idea, especially when it comes to the idea of a second screen.

The service has been useful when a broadcast segment will soon be old news, such as on a primary night, and minimal production time is needed to get a video out while it is still relevant.

However, the question of how many platforms you want to use does come up. For live events (such as the Live TV Summit in 2011 where Snappy won ‘best social TV’ idea) it does solve a problem, but only until you’ve processed your higher quality full video file.

Check out NewsHour’s Snappy page here.