Could 2010 be the year that Social Media and Television finally get it together?
Fans of specific TV shows from different timezones around the world are saving the latest episodes of their favourite shows on their personal video recorders (PVRs) and then arranging common viewing times with their friends to watch the shows whilst discussing the action together on Skype, reports the New York Times.
Users are creating their own social TV experiences ahead of the broadcast networks who are testing real-time interactive systems, but are yet to make them publically available.
In 2009, Fox undertook a limited trial with Twitter during reruns of sci-fi series ‘Fringe’ in the US, running into criticism almost immediately from the show’s fans by swamping the screen with tweets from the cast and crew of the show, thus obscuring much of the action.
In the UK, high profile post-apocalypse drama, BBC’s ‘Survivors’, launched alongside an innovative stream of tweets from ’survivors’ supposedly trying to get messages out to a world in which most of the population had been wiped out by a mystery virus.
Sadly, these tweets had petered out by Episode 2 as the production team seemed to lose faith in an idea which must have sounded great in the caffeine-fuelled brainstorm-session. Twitter-using Survivors fans were left with nothing but the official #wearesurvivors hashtag to link their bemused conversations together.
With the second series of Survivors due to hit UK TV screens on 12th January, fans of the show will be eager to see if the show’s producers will reintroduce any social media elements to the enhance viewers’ experience of the show.
Elsewhere on Twitter, real-time conversations about TV shows being broadcast live are routinely linked together through the use of hashtags. However, watching TV with the laptop on your knee isn’t for everyone. Not all of your followers might be interested in your views on the latest entrants in the Big Brother house or the latest soccer scores and they may decide to unfollow you. Other followers might be interested, but see your tweets on the subject as ’spoilers’ because they’ve recorded the show to watch later.
For now, social TV seems to be a predominantly web-based experience, as the popularity of services such as tvloop.com demonstrates. Also, the NYT article highlights a ‘can’t wait culture‘ of TV viewers using cheap adaptors to connect their cable and satellite feeds to their PCs to grab live TV broadcasts in order to stream them on sites such as justin.tv. In this way, viewers on the East Coast of the USA are able to stream shows for the benefit of friends on the West Coast several hours ahead of their offical broadcast slot, chatting to them online at the same time.
Social Media and TV fanatics are ahead of the game right now and bending the rules to their will. It remains to be seen whether the broadcasters, perhaps spurred on by advertisers eyeing a potentially motivated and engaged audience, will be able to serve up an enticing interactive broadcast experience during the forthcoming year.
Finally, it wouldn’t be post on a tech blog without mention of the Apple tablet. Commentators have convinced themselves that ‘ a large iPhone’ or ‘a better Kindle’ won’t be enough for Apple to blow the market’s mind. Maybe Social TV programming of some sort will find it’s way into the suite of offerings on the ‘yet to be confirmed’ iSlate platform?
Could web apps currently geared for the iPhone such as TVCatchup find a happy home on a tablet product which might enable them to run alongside Skype or any of a wide range of social media tools?
photo : althouse (cc)
A leading innovator in the IT Outsourcing industry, Tim is often on the move but can be regularly found in Manchester and London, UK. His focus is on social and mobile technologies but given half a chance he'll try to sneak music or football into his blog-posts. Tim can be found at One Greener Day and you can also follow @timdifford on Twitter.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by The Next Web, Pim Derneden. Pim Derneden said: I will be having my own.. RT @TheNextWeb Will 2010 the Year of Social TV? http://tnw.to/11LuW by @timdifford [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tim Difford and Ana Balentovic, Spot411. Spot411 said: Will 2010 be the Year of Social TV? – http://bit.ly/5H89MR http://bit.ly/7DOg3t [...]
I think it’s not the lack of two way communication that is making tv broadcast less popular with young people, it’s the poor viewing expercience in general. You can only choose to watch what the networks offer, you have to sit through a lot of commercials, movies and tv series are far behind on US broadcast schedules, You can not pause whenever you like, etc.
Sure you can bring in the argument of doing some of those thing with new devices and recorder add-ons, but let’s face it. That’s still no match for what the internet has to offer for “free”. So instead of making all this fuzz about some buzzwords networks should consider rethinking the viewer experience from the ground up. Today’s youth does not care about interacting with strangers on a tv set. We just want to watch the things we like. When we like it. How we like it (I personally enjoy a movie better without subtitles baked in). And without having to store a bunch of DVD cases when buying. There’s this great new technology called hard disks, and they will totally revolutionize the way we will store our data! But that’s a different matter…
Last point of my comment: what does the word “social” even mean anymore? The internet has been “social” since IRC and bulletin boards. Everythime I hear people passionately speak of “the new social web” it’s -most of the time- some “old guy” trying to excuse his product for lacking a rich enough experience, or some other gut trying to convince the old guy to spend a lot of money on “socializing” his product. Will my sneakers get social too one day? I like my anti social sneakers. They dont’ need a friend list.
I hope my comment doesn’t sound like a flame, because I honestly only wanted to get this off my chest. I love your site, bookmarked it and checking in daily ;) Keep it up!
Kind regards from Belgium.
Greetings Tim,
great post…were definitely heading into the new social era of online video.
Ashlee hit it on the head in the NYT article that people are finding “tricks” to socialize together around online video content. Whether it’s redirecting a stream through Justin.TV to enable chat, or keeping a second browser tab open with Twitter, Facebook, Skype etc.
We designed Rippol to serve as the social hub for online video. We have taken all of the social features from the sites you outlined and brought them together into one site so that you don’t have use any “tricks” to get social around what you’re watching.
Imagine if you mixed together Hulu, Netflix, Ustream, Google Video and YouTube, sprinkled in some Pandora and Boxee, then layered that on top of Facebook and Twitter.
http://rippol.com
Once logged in, users can chat through Facebook, become aware of what their friends are watching, share links and suggest content to their extended social networks, including Twitter, in real-time.
Glad to see your drawing attention to this trend as one to watch in 2010.
Cheers, MK
[...] Box2010. Another year which will be the year of mobile, of social media ROI, social media CRM , social TV, social commerce, the year of tablets and a lot of other technologies my sister or my dad [...]
[...] This fits in well with the recent thought that 2010 is to be the year of the social television. [...]
[...] Will 2010 be the Year of Social TV? By Tim Difford on January 4, 2010 [...]
[...] Social TV? [...]
[...] TV is one of a handful of social technologies I approach with trepidation. For some kinds of programs, [...]
[...] 2010 be the Year of Social TV? (via The Next Web) http://thenextweb.com/2010/01/.....social-tv/ http://bit.ly/890w0e VirtuallyReady – Wed 06 Jan 19:08 0 votes previous [...]
Great post,
I actually just wrote a little write up on that NYT article from this weekend as well (http://bit.ly/6pnmoo), and the angle I took, points towards the same thing – Social TV is coming.
Our biggest observations have been the overwhelming desire by users to want to mobilize and socialize around TV. If they don’t get formal solutions, they’re developing ad hoc ones (as the article developed). They’re all multi-tasking and on multiple devices.
Additionally, with the ability to really watch a show whenever you want to nowadays, you CAN do things like schedule conversations with friends when it’s convenient… and that’s exactly what people want to be doing.
So yes, this is the year!
Kate
I think the TV guys need to learn from the gamers. The idea that an entire viewing audience — everyone watching Survivors or Fringe — might want to interact with each other is ludicrous: there’s simply for the network to display or for the viewers to process the shear volume of stuff people post. Instead, look at services like Xbox Live, where you can talk to your opponents or teammates… but not to everyone who is playing that particular game at that time. The smaller, dynamic “community”aspect of this sort of service makes it workable and interesting.
I think the TV guys need to learn from the gamers. The idea that an entire viewing audience — everyone watching Survivors or Fringe — might want to interact with each other is ludicrous: there’s simply no way for the network to display, nor for the viewers to process, the shear volume of stuff people post. Instead, look at services like Xbox Live, where you can talk to your opponents or teammates… but not to everyone who is playing that particular game at that time. The smaller, dynamic “community” aspect of this sort of service makes it workable and interesting.
[...] andre snakker om tjenester som knytter sammen TV og nett. For eksempel The Next Web og NY [...]
[...] van Yahoo speelt daar lekker op in. Een blik op het tv kijken van de toekomst? Lees er ook dit artikel [...]
[...] To read the full article visit: The Next web [...]
[...] Broadcasters tune in to social networking The coming year will bring major new convergences between the Internet and television, fueling a wave of social-media/broadcast hybrids, argues Tim Difford. For now, the fusion is happening mostly on computers and smartphones, Difford notes, but as Internet-enabled TVs become more widespread, broadcasters may make their programs more interactive. Harry Gold explains the basic functionality these Web-enabled televisions will provide. TheNextWeb.com [...]