Social TV has been attracting a fair amount of attention
recently. We are promised big things in the coming months with new
companies emerging to build new social TV solutions. Big budgets
are being ploughed into new 3rd party platforms and intermediaries.
But do we really need them? I am not sure we do.
Social TV is better delivered by integrating TV with existing
social media, which means using what is already out there. Facebook
and Twitter have an established, and very large, user base. Why
create others? They have all the APIs and interactions you need to
harness social media for TV so why replicate it with "new"
specialist Social TV solutions?
As part of building social TV it makes perfect sense to
integrate with Facebook's platform, allowing people to interact
with your service and their friends - using 'Like' and 'Check-in'
that are already available. Facebook 'places' was extended in April
to include 'time' and 'place' and thus allowing check-in to TV
shows.
My point is that you can build something that's highly effective
with existing social networking sites without the need for a 3rd
party intermediary, as we did when we won the Samsung App
competition - a simple EPG with recommendations engine integrated
with Facebook on Samsung Smart TVs.
Put social media (Facebook and Twitter) at the heart of your VoD
solution, relate it to your specific content needs and your
existing social media presence, not as a bolt-on 3rd party service.
With this in mind we have built social media into the heart of our
Connected VoD solution using existing platforms without the need
for a totally new social TV solution. Why reinvent the wheel?