There’s an interesting piece in Ad Age this week on Social TV. In my mind it adds more credence to the “everything old is new again” theory since as with many “new” tech-based things what we’re seeing is very old behaviors expressed via brand spanking new digital tools. For those of you playing at home, our friends at Wikipedia define social TV as
“a general term for technology that supports communication and social interaction in either the context of watching television, or related to TV content. It also includes the study of television-related social behavior, devices and networks. Social television systems can for example integrate voice communication, text chat, presence and context awareness, TV recommendations, ratings, or video-conferencing with the TV content either directly on the screen or by using ancillary devices.”
Which of course, is kind of an old thing, right?
When I was a kid, we had one TV which sat in the den. Most of our neighbors had a similar set up. TV watching was a highly social thing and the fact that there were limited choices (which in my house was usually a sporting event of some sort) available on the limited devices meant shared viewing experiences. Our family and friends sat together and discussed what we were seeing. Afterwards, we shared our experiences outside of the home at school or at work orally or maybe by passing a note in class.
Fast forward. The aforementioned article says that TV is driving social media of all sorts. Things trend on Twitter when they’re on TV. Or this quote from GetGlue‘s CEO:
“What we’ve learned since launching GetGlue,” said CEO Alex Iskold, “is that entertainment is an incredibly emotional experience for people and the reason that people love checking in is because it’s a gesture of self-expression. It’s people saying, “I’m a diehard “True Blood” fan, and that’s a really important thing to me, it really matters to me, and that show gets into my head and gets into my soul.'”
Or maybe it’s just the Fear Of Missing Out thing. I’m not sure Laugh-In got in my soul, but we were all talking about it the next day. In any event, each of us has multiple points of consumption for video content (what used to be TV) – laptops, tablets, mobile devices and oh yeah, HD flat screen TV’s in the living room. Other than live sports, we consume on our own schedule, but the behavior is the same. It’s just in a really, really big living room. The biggest change, frankly, is that now viewing is more of an active, learn-forward experience although it’s not really the viewing itself but the conversation around the viewing. I don’t think it’s as easy to do as chatting with the person in the chair next to you. Then again, that chair can be on the other side of town.
What are you talking about?
Consult Keith 