Social TV: when your TV meets your social network

With the rise of the Social Networks, Social TV is now mentioned everywhere. But what is it? TV has always been a social experience, with people gathered around the TV set in families, groups of friends and neighbors, and even whole villages. Major events that include sports like the Olympics and the Super Bowl, and sadly, catastrophes are “consumed” socially. So what is new?

Current Social TV offerings usually combine the TV experience with some form of direct interaction (Instant Messaging, video conferencing, picture exchange). A group of friends is now defined by some form of social networking tool, like Facebook and MySpace. So the “living room” experience becomes global. The group interacts during a show, suggests programming, and exchanges ratings. This capability is now available online, and more and more Set-top box (STB) applications are being developed and deployed in trials. Thus enabled, the Social Network becomes a virtual operator, suggesting content, managing users and identifying and setting expectations. Innovation moves to the edge and the community becomes central to the TV world.

There is also another way to personalize  the TV experience. The availability of widgets to deliver targeted information from weather to movie listing is creating the “my TV” experience that consumers, used to the PC and smartphone applications, are requesting more and more  on their televisions . In that context the Social TV becomes another element  of  personalization, one that combines the “me” with “my friends”.

The immediacy and immersive aspects of TV remain. TV is not and will never be a PC. Not just because the STBs are not PCs, but because the expectations of watching TV are different than those of working on a PC or interrogating a smartphone. TV is now. And with Personal Video Recorders (PVR) like TiVO, now is defined by when and how the user wants to access content. There is no login or synchronization to a server necessary. TV is still mostly a passive activity. Social TV makes watching TV less passive but still preserves the overall viewing experience.

In this context, what is next for Social TV? As with any technology deployment, as soon as the “wow factor” is passed the next question is who can make money with these services? And how can current operators, who fear the erosion of TV viewership lost to the Internet, provide the services that will keep viewers engaged?

Recent work by Chintan Vaishnav of the MIT Communications Future Program (CFP) on the TV industry provides interesting results. Chintan applied systems dynamics to the TV innovation dilemma. His results show that for operators to keep market share in a highly competitive environment is to offer “ancillary services”, those services that are supplemental to the “me too TV” of linear and VOD offerings. These ancillary services include the social TV offerings - but what else?

Let us forget for one moment the question of content. What is a TV? It’s a very nice screen that opens to the world. So, the TV may be seen as one method of delivering entertainment, advertising and social services to customers. The widgets that tell you the weather can also tell you it is time to pay your bills, take your medication, renew a subscription etc. When combined with recent developments in cell phone technologies for e-wallet or payments, the TV is also a entry into the retail world (Amazon already has an  agreement with TiVO for  example). What is needed is to link web-based applications to the STB, something that the Social TV technologies have already done. The interesting side effect here is that now the offered applications are designed by the service providers, not the transport providers. And those service providers that happen to be banks or insurance providers or retailers come with large customer bases, and can establish fruitful relations with the providers of the “pipes” and the broadcasters.

So how do we get there? Is this invention or innovation? Well, both. To get that multiscreen experience we need more open protocols and interfaces. To get security for TV based transactions we need more NFC/RFID open protocols and security layers above javascript. And of course performance, which is key to the user experience.

There is a project at MIT Media Lab called the “Next Billion” that targets the billion or so people who have no access to cell phones. Social TV, when delivering services associated with your social network, can essentially bring the “next 45 millions” to the web experience (in the US), including those customers who use phones to call people and PCs for email. But who would appreciate getting more information from their social net: family, support networks, financial advisers, favorite retailers etc.? This means extending the concept of social networking to social safety net and life experiences. And even the most tech savvy consumer would be interested, as it brings cross-generational communication to life, and enables parents to communicate with their teenagers.

By enabling the TV to reach the web we can CHANGE. THE. WORLD. NOW.