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Viewing report
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Social TV and the Emergence of Interactive TV
Multimedia Research Group, Nov 2010, Pages: 90
As the popularity of Social Media has grown, a new interesting development has been the emergence of Social TV. Consumers all over the world are using Social Media networks like Facebook and Twitter to connect and converse with their friends and family. One of the most popular topics is entertainment and TV. This has led to Social TV, which is essentially the combination of Social Media with TV (for example, watching a program on TV while commenting with friends about the program on a laptop or an iPad). Although technology and social networks have given us this new term, the concept isn’t new. TV has always been a “social” medium. Social TV is about bringing “social” back to TV via technology.
As indicated above, “Social TV” refers to the simultaneous use of Social Media tools while watching TV. Already, Nielsen reported in March 2010 that 59% of the U.S. population browse the Internet and watch TV simultaneously at least once per month. This number is sure to grow, especially among younger consumers who have grown up with smartphones and prefer watching TV on laptops. There are many types of interactivity possible from “checking-in” to TV shows, commenting on shows that are being shown live, to more sophisticated features like text chatting, polling, and even audio/video chatting. Although it is still very early, Social TV has the promise of making TV interactive and social, like it was when a family sat together around the living room TV.
Why Social TV? The key is engagement. Social TV drives the level of engagement up, increases ratings, and can also help increase revenues via advertising. For Service Providers and Content Owners, the advantages are many: not only do consumers get a backchannel, but they can also have a very immersive and interactive TV experience. Consumers can use an iPad, for example, and watch their favorite TV shows. They also can comment and talk to their friends (and so much more) while still watching TV.
Social TV isn’t for every person, nor for every TV show. It works best on shows that have a strong element of live TV, which encourage a greater immediate need to discuss what’s happening as it happens. Popular live shows like “American Idol,” “Dancing with the Stars,” are good examples because they have large audiences, and are unscripted reality shows with a weekly contest to draw viewers in over a TV season and which often use voting or polling from the audience. Sports and news are other good examples of the type of content that attracts Social TV.
Currently, there are many Social TV Vendors that have a wide range of features. Some just offer content recommendations, while others have a more integrated platform that works with the backend systems of Service Providers. Most Vendors have a separate app, usually an iPhone or Android app, to offer their functions, but others also have Websites, and even native iPad apps. In fact, the iPad has emerged as a “second screen” device for Social TV, where consumers can go and interact with others while simultaneously watching TV. Most Vendors believe that smartphones and tablet computers are the best platforms (compared with PCs[1] and laptops) because they are portable and allow users to log in, so they can rate movies and comment on shows.
[1] In this report, PC means all personal computers using online, which can be used for many platforms such as Mac, Windows and Linux.
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