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We speak to Adam Cahan, CEO of US firm IntoNow, developer of a mobile app which identifies what show or movie a viewer is watching and provides social TV experiences around it.

IntoNow was acquired by Yahoo in May 2011.

What are the major advantages of adding social TV features to a television platform?

Entertainment is inherently social. If you think about your favourite experiences watching a movie, TV show, going to a concert - you will think about the people you did it with.

What "social TV" is really about is enabling and surfacing behaviours that we already do. What this allows us to do is cause people to share, express and consume more around the shows they love.

So it's an additive experience and one that helps harness a consumer behaviour that is already occurring.


Where do you think social TV is headed in the next 12 months?


Let's start with the consumer and the behaviours we are observing. The first thing to observe is that people are watching more TV - it's up 1% from last year, which is pretty dramatic when you consider it's already the single largest activity behind working and sleeping - in the US your TV is on six hours a day!

But then let's look at what a viewer is doing - we've seen in certain demographics that 70% of audiences are multitasking with a device (phone, tablet, or PC). In fact the single most popular time to use your tablet is while watching the TV: 40% of the time.

So what we see happening is that devices are changing the way the world is watching television. It boils down to two primary things - communication/community and content

In the next 12 months you are going to see a few things emerging - ambient information, and presence.

Ambient information is born from the idea that user interactions become limited with devices and that data is being collected in new ways. PCs are a two-handed text based input - it's an intent driven experience. You navigate or search with the use of direct text inputs. Devices like tablets and phones are a single-handed experience where context is critical - user inputs are sparse.

So we at IntoNow are leveraging sound to establish context, while others use GPS, photos or accelerometers. With these few inputs we then surface relevant content experiences. For us that brings up scores during a sports event, or related articles for news, or stock quotes - really anything we can establish as relevant/related to the experience you are watching - that's all algorithmic.

Presence is where we think the communication/community experience is starting to head. It's really about expressing what/where you are at that moment in time so you can engage with the relevant community (it's why we named our company IntoNow).

Facebook is certainly leading a lot of this with Open Graph, but the concept is expressing your interests at that moment in time, interests that are by definition transient, to help create serendipity and user feedback.

How might social TV features affect content consumption patterns?

A lot people are focused on the notion of discovery and recommendation. That's certainly one usage case - i.e. what could I be watching right now, what are my friends watching? I like the following shows, what else?

We certainly see that as consumers get access to more choice and larger libraries of content, they are indeed consuming more. Just think about how much your own behaviours change when you get a tablet like an iPad. Suddenly you are watching a lot more because the opportunity to do so is more prevalent.

Beyond that we believe that there is going to be a shift in live for certain genres of programming which lend themselves naturally to community interaction - for example reality programming, sports, events, and others.


What are the major challenges when implementing social TV?

The issues that are typically faced are twofold: firstly we would say a world in which every content producer and distributor creates an app for their show or channel is a failure, because what this does is break the social fabric/community that comes from all watching something together. It means a lot of work for very limited scale.

And secondly it's about creating a really simple and yet compelling user experience - for example, scripted dramas are not where consumers want to be continually interrupted/polled/engaged, they just want to watch the show.


Are companion devices such as smartphones and tablets the best way to interact with and control social TV features on the TV screen?

Yes. We would say that ultimately these devices are the right user experience, input and interactive companion. The TV tends to be the social centre of the living room with many individuals watching it. The interactive/communication layer is more of a one-to-one experience where we don't all want to see on the main screen what you are chatting about, or what you are reading, etc.


Do you think social recommendations are more powerful than content curation and automated recommendations?

It's about a blended experience  for different usage cases. So for example a recommendation from a friend typically starts with "oh you love the show Dexter, well then you should definitely check out Breaking Bad" (I'm really into that right now!)

As you see there are two inputs happening - the original show context and then a recommendation of something else related. So the answer is algorithmic + social to help drive discovery.


How might social TV be monetised?

In our opinion, there are clearly big opportunities for enhanced user engagement, but also perhaps more importantly to help advertisers extend and enhance their message across screens in a way that is compelling to users and associated with what they are actually seeing on their TV… As they say, "watch this space".

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