Social TV and Building TV Audiences and Ad Revenues
by Sam Mishra, President, FranTerActive
Social TV is all about MAKING MONEY from the confluence of emerging social media technologies such as chats and twits and occassional outbursts of
gratification from that old idiot box, the television.
Let me explain what I mean by Social TV. People, including myself, were twitting about the Grammys this year (2010) while
watching it on TV. This is one example. While more people are dropping out
of TV viewership, there was an uptick in viewership of the winter olympics, and those who were watching were chatting / twitting
on their laptops to their friends about what they were watching, creating
networking effects. This is another example of Social TV. Just as
social media is all about virtual socialization, Social TV is all about watching together, virtually. And the idea extends to include
more than just TV, for while the IPL was going on India, while hundreds of millions were watching TV every evening in Bangalore
or Bombay, hundreds of thousands outside India were watching the same matches (or at least monitoring the scores on cricinfo or
similar websites) on YouTube the corresponding morning in Boston and Bay Area San Francisco. This is the third example of
Social TV in its broadest possible sense.
The above three examples hint at emerging, new viewing habits of multitasking on laptops while watching TV in living rooms
all across America (and all across the globe, actually). The time is now ripe for this emerging set of technologies working
seamlessly together to take it to the next level. For example, if the chats on the laptop can be replicated on the TV remote
by an elegant combination of smart-phone technology with the established TV remote technology of surfing channels etc., TV viewers
can chat with their friends while browsing TV, telling them what they are chatting about. In short, Social TV is an
emerging technology with massive implications on lifestyle in the living room on how people will leverage an older technology
like television with newer Internet gadgets such as smart phones / laptops, etc.
So, where do we go from here? How do start-ups make the next billion from this emerging TV viewing trend? Here are a couple of ideas on
building products, services, and platforms to cater to this
emerging business model:
Provide texting ability from Cable / TV remote, to cell phone numbers / IM (instant messaging) ids / e-mail ids, so that the viewer
can let the friends and family, the neighbors, and the enemies know what she is watching on TV and what they are missing.
Provide ability on smart phones to start from where the viewer leaves big-screen TV, when she has to be on the move again to pick her
children up from the dance class.
Once I move to the kitchen to microwave the dinner, move what I was watching on big screen TV to the "microwave screen." Allow
buttons on the microwave to provide texting ability to cell phone numbers / IM (instant messaging) ids / e-mail ids.
Want more ideas?Tap into the tech strategy podcasts available on the home page
of this website. Thank you.
