- Deutsche Telekom entertains 37% more German viewers ... 2012-05-10T11:32
- BT Vision passes 700k subs ... 2012-05-10T09:44
- Skype: "We are learning a lot about what makes TV different" ... 2012-05-09T12:37
- Verimatrix: "HD content delivered to any device has become the primary benchmark" ... 2012-05-09T11:37
Social TV Comment
2012: The year of social TV?
What will 2012 be the ‘year of’? In the TV space, while you could make a strong case for connected TVs and OTT content services, perhaps the most important new trend this year will be the evolution of social TV.
For many of its 800 million users worldwide, Facebook now is the internet. It is already a major channel for distributing and consuming content, although the full potential of that is a long way from being realised. Many broadcasters are beginning to implement social strategies to enhance the value of their services (see Figure 1), but there is no ‘best practice’ for harnessing the appeal of social media: We have yet to discover which strategies will succeed.
Look at the ultra-competitive UK premium video market: Both the newcomer Netflix and the market-leading BSkyB recognise the potential of social media, but for very different ends. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings sees a future where TV is primarily consumed on-demand, delivered via IP, and where social media – specifically Facebook, with whom they have partnered at launch – will have a role in enabling discovery and building communities around non-linear content.
The potential of Social TV
Sky has seen the potential of social TV too, but from a diametrically different perspective: Social TV’s power, for Sky, is in the ability of social apps like Zeebox (in which the broadcaster now has a 10% stake) to enhance and reinforce a live TV service. Zeebox, by allowing viewers to instantly access, share and contribute to a stream of related content, embodies and advances an existing social trend for a parallel and complementary “second screen” experience on a connected device, alongside the TV.
Social will have a key role in helping us discover new content, especially as the amount of content available continues to grow. But if existing broadcasters can harness social media to enhance the immediacy and value of their linear schedule, the threat from the on-demand universe Hastings predicts will be largely negated in the near term.
After all, the vast majority of current TV catch-up requests come within 24 hours of transmission, suggesting that UK audiences are still very much wedded to the live schedule. Services built on the long tail of archive content, even when offering it for free (such as SeeSaw), have so far failed. And for now, without that expensively-acquired ‘short head’ of the latest programmes, it will be hard to build and retain a paying audience, social or not.
