Social TV Trends – An Overview

IMTC 2025 virtual conference will take place on 7th through 8th of April, and will cover a wide variety of subjects relating to the future of technology and communication in our lives. This will be  the first in a series of posts that will touch some of the subjects that will be discussed in the conference. We hope you will enjoy them.

For those of us not in the Social TV field, can you please give us a few words on who you are, and what you do?
My name is Dror Gill, and I’m the founder and CEO of Gamdala Ltd., a strategic consultancy in the fields of video, Internet and mobile.  I work with technology companies on their strategic directions, defining product roadmaps, performing market and competitive analysis, etc.  I also help VCs to perform due diligence on start-ups, and in my spare time I work on incubating my own ideas in these fields as an entrepreneur.

Social TV has become such a buzz word, what do you refer to when you talk about Social TV?
I would define Social TV as communicating with your friends while watching TV.  Today there are many implementations of Social TV in various platforms, but generally they can be categorized by three main types:

• One screen experience on the PC:  Here you are watching live TV on the Internet, and chatting  or commenting on the show at the same website.  This type of solution has the lowest entry barrier due to the high flexibility that is available on the web platform, so here we are seeing many start-up companies such as ClipSync, View2Gether, Vidrollr, tvChatter, Cliqset,  and MediaFriends.
• One screen experience on the television: This requires a special type of set-top box or television, which enables users to interact and chat with other viewers while watching regular broadcast TV.  The Verizon FIOS IPTV platform is the most advanced in this respect, enabling viewers to follow tweets related to a specific program and update their facebook status with information on the show they are watching.  Yahoo Widgets, developed for specific integrated TV platforms is another example of this type of service.
• Two-screen experience: in this constellation you are watching TV on your main screen, in full broadcast quality with HD etc., and a second screen such as a Notebook, Netbook of Smartphone is used for a chat, comments and interaction with the show itself. This type of service combines the high-quality TV experience of a regular broadcast, with no special equipment required on the TV side, with the ultimate flexibility of the web platform and the emerging trend of mobile browsing via netbooks and smartphones.  Interestingly, research has shown that 50-70% of viewers surf the web while watching regular TV.  Many TV shows, such as “Stricly Come Dancing”, “Come Dine with Me”, “Four Weddings” and “America’s Top Model” now include web-based real-time social experiences, where viewers can take part in a live chat, filter messages according to their supported contestant, predict scores, and take part in an online play-along games

What are the most difficult constraints today on the implementation and development in the Social TV field?
The most difficult constraint is finding the right user experience for Social TV.  Interactive TV has been a dream of many decades, but failed miserably due to poor experience and lack of user interest.  The big challenge for social TV today, is Creating an experience that will be appreciated by both “laid back” TV viewers and “lean forward” web surfers, and will merge these two paradigms together seamlessly.  Another challenge is the fragmentation of Social TV channels, with some broadcasters using Twitter, some Facebook, some chat and other use proprietary interaction means.  We still haven’t found the single Social TV platform that unifies users ease and comfort of use with cross channels TV shows to provide a consistent experience.

What is the market opportunity of social TV, and what does this experience provide to viewers ?
It is no secret that TV advertising revenues are declining, and advertisers are constantly searching for new ways to reach their potential customers on web and mobile platforms.  Social TV can become a tool for advertisers to combine the quality content and wide reach of broadcast TV, with the engagement factor of social media.  By creating engaging online experiences that complement captivating TV content and associating them with major brands, advertisers can generate a new revenue stream to compensate for their loss in traditional broadcast TV.

From the users’ point of view, Social TV makes TV viewing social again.  In the early days of TV, the whole family or groups of friends would gather around the TV set in the living room to watch their favorite show or sports event.  Today, with affordable TV prices and technology advances, each family member can watch different content on their own TV.  Social TV creates an opportunity to bring people back together while watching TV, regardless of their physical location.  It also makes the TV viewing experience richer than the passive “Couch Potato” norm, with users interacting, playing, commenting and chatting, and doing so also find themselves more engaged in the TV content.

What are the main developments that you expect to see in social TV in 2010?
I think we will see more and more TV shows combining interactive experiences online with traditional broadcast TV viewing, through web and mobile channels.  This will go far beyond SMS voting, and create a new medium for communication between users, content producers and advertisers.  We will see more boxes that enable direct access to Internet video content on your TV, bypassing cable and satellite, and integration of such capabilities into TV sets as well.  Facebook and twitter will become common features in such platforms, including specific filtering by TV show, friends circle, etc.  And finally, I believe vendors will continue to search for ways of monetizing the social TV experience to make up for lost revenues in traditional TV.