JP Rangaswami
Behind closed doors in offices from the media centers of New York to the entertainment capital of Hollywood, content programmers and code jockeys are no doubt trying to figure out how to marry traditional television with social networking.
Does the lean-forward experience, interactivity and backchannel chatter of social networks have a place in the tightly controlled, lean-back world of television? I’m among those who believe the two will wed in a satisfying way, though we’re likely five to 10 years from that happening. I blogged about Intel and Yahoo’s experiments with the Cinematic Internet (or Widget Channel TV) last year, and I’ve written over the years about the largely discredited experiments with “interactive television.”
But a week ago today, in the corporate offices of BT in London, the Traveling Geeks were treated to a 10-minute presentation by Tanya Goldhaber, a graduate student at MIT just finishing up an eight-week internship at BT, about “Social TV.” We were so intrigued that we kept tossing questions to her well after her allotted time.
Peer-influenced viewership
As audiences continue to fragment, as more of us multitask with laptops on our laps while we’re watching TV, as the major social networks continue to amass millions of more members each week, and as the Internet finally comes to our living rooms with a new generation of devices like Boxee, it’s only a matter of time before television becomes social.
Goldhaber showed some screenshots of what a prototype social TV screen might look like. (Prototypes I’ve seen at the Intel Developers Network and at LinkTV a few months ago take it in similar if somewhat different directions.)
I suspect most of us don’t want to see a CNN-like crawl of our friends’ comments at the bottom of our prime-time programming. But I certainly would like to know if my friends were enthralled by a one-time PBS special, or if DirecTV was televising the ninth inning of a no-hit game, or if one of my friends was interviewed by a news crew.
Goldhaber noted that today’s Electronic Program Guides are all but impossible to navigate, and she cited studies that people would rather get viewing recommendations from a friend than from a computer. In survey of TV viewers, 37% of respondents said they started watching their favorite TV show because of a friend’s recommendation or word of mouth.
I asked Goldhaber if, a few years out, social networks might lead to “swarming behavior” among TV viewers, causing quick spikes in viewership for little-known niche programs based on social influencers’ actions. Certainly possible, she said.
I’d be intrigued by a system that automatically feeds me information about what my friends are collectively watching, instead of having to wait for them to tell me through a kind of tweet burst. And I’d also be interested by a peer, or friend of friends, recommendation system that elevates obscure but high-quality independent Web programs.
Social TV could reshape the television landscape — which is why you’ll never see the major networks lead this transformation. Like Napster and Apple in the music industry, the innovation will come from the bottom up, well outside of the media and entertainment industries.
BT and open source
I’ll be honest: Before I visited the UK, I assumed that BT was Britain’s version of AT&T: monolithic, imposing, not terribly open to innovation. An evening of conversations and an afternoon of presentations at BT has disabused me of that notion.
BT’s purchase of Silicon Valley-based Ribbit (I met Ribbit exec Crick Waters, now BT’s EVP for Strategy and Biz Dev) has led to a remarkable amount of creative ferment around opening up the BT platform to outside developers. (Take, for example, openbroadband.bt.com: “Power your apps with programmable broadband. Join our partner ecosystem.”)
On Saturday afternoon I had a short discussion with Howard Rheingold about BT and our host, JP Rangaswami, managing director of BT Design (pictured above — Howard refers to him as BT’s “CIO”). Howard said that unlike America’s “fear-driven” telecoms, BT has the opportunity to reinvent itself as a “network platform” that extends well beyond traditional telecommunications by tapping into the Net’s wellspring of connectivity.
However that eventually pans out from a business perspective, JP and his team are on the case.
Related
• Howard Rheingold: Will BT let JP create the first open network operator? One scenario for the mobile Web
• Tom Foremski: UK Diary: Tuesday – It Never Rains But It Pours . . . More BT Innovation
• Meghan Asha: BT’s Programmable Broadband!
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
There are some really amazing opportunities for the future of social media. I'd love to see the integration of TV and social media platforms as a regular part of the entertainment experience, bu I agree it's probably quite a few years away.
I seems peculiar that people would want to watch TV 24/7. The companies are doing it to sell more commercial advertising and this will be just another way to push commercials. We see them now on TV, movies, online, radio etc. Do we really need another?
I take your point, StillLife, but the fact is that each American watches TV an average of 6 hours per day, every day. If we can socialize and smarten up that experience, I think it's a positive thing.
I take your point, StillLife, but the fact is that each American watches TV an average of 6 hours per day, every day. If we can socialize and smarten up that experience, I think it's a positive thing.
Internet TV is the wave of the future. I have friends who use their laptop as their TV
Interesting article here on Social TV — Convergence is Coming – http://shar.es/1bzOx
Writer interviewed several players at http://www.ibc.org
You probably want to check http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/miso-social-tv/id3… this is already happening to some extent for an iPhone or an iPad user!!!