TV houses using social media for research

TV companies like ABC and NBC are always looking for ways to improve viewer ratings, viewers themselves to watch TV, and to create enhanced services based around TV shows. We've already seen this with Facebook applications like Addicted to Lost around the ABC's hit TV show Lost and Warner Brothers' move using Facebook on their TheWB.com network. Now, NBC is using the Beijing Olympics as a testbed for research into social media to determine which sports viewers like to watch and to provide a "comprehensive picture of how people are supplementing TV viewership with tools such as video streaming, video on demand and mobile phones" (Alan Wurtzel, NBC's research chief). They are also giving online surveys to viewers to guage their feedback and even giving special programmed cell phones to look at viewer behaviour when away from the TV watching the Olympics.

I think it's about time that TV began to use social media and integrate it with their own TV offerings. There needs to be more value add in TV, it needs to be a more social experience. This reminds me of a research project from PARC called SocialTV. You can also read a previous blog post I wrote about this.

On Technorati: Olympics2008, social media, TV

The Venice Project is now Joost

There's been quite a bit of talk about The Venice Project, which is to bring customized interactive TV the way you want it to your desktop. It is now called Joost. Why the buzz around Joost? Have you heard of Kazaa, the free peer-to-peer file sharing software? Or ever used Skype (which by the way if you haven't tried, you must try, it's great for calling people long distance and you can also do video conferencing and text chatting), the free voice-over-IP calling software for calling people on their computers or even to their phones? Well, the masterminds behind those two successful software companies (Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström) are at it again. After they sold Skype to eBay, they wanted another challenge and had this vision of freeing TV from the strongholds of TV broadcasting companies.

Here are some behind the scenes footage of interviews with the people behind The Venice Project, now Joost.

What does Joost look like? Here are some screenshots from their web site, it integrates your TV channels with chatting, with news content, think of it like a TV portal.



Here is the channel screen:



You can chat with other people on the network while watching TV and about the TV program you're watching:



Joost has closed their beta program for testers that want to test their software. Fortunately, I made it through their beta program so I'm testing their software right now. It's pretty neat. This also reminds me of a research project at PARC (which I was at last summer for a research internship) called SocialTV, with the idea of making TV more social and interactive. Perhaps this is what's needed to fuel TV programming and content, this new model, which will change the TV broadcasting companies and their stronghold on the content and the delivery.

On Technorati: Joost, SocialTV, The Venice Project