Social technology, such as social networking, has become an ubiquitous platform that has completely transformed how human beings connect, share, communicate, and now even watch TV. And social technology has not even begun to mature….
Right now, the industry is witnessing a spattering of new companies have caught wind of the emerging Social TV market and are developing content, interfaces, platforms and devices that deliver more relevant, customizable and relevant entertainment with embedded social features such as sharing, chatting and games. For example, the recent YouTube redesign and the announcement that Youtube will be producing its own contents will only add more fire to marketplace. Yet, in spite of how new the concept and technology of Social TV is, it is one that is continuing a model of disruption of traditional media that began with cable and accelerated with the adoption of the Internet. But what does this disruptive model mean?
For one, giving viewers more power to control over what they watch completely destroys the one-way conversation entertainment publishers have enjoyed for decades, which mean they must work harder. Ultimately, publishers will have to pursue a relationship with their audiences - sometimes from scratch. But with that extra, more responsive work to create compelling and social entertainment content comes the benefit of more data and essentially newly discovered streams of revenue such as advertising and digital goods. ReadWriteWeb’s Alicia Eler provides an insightful overview of the nature, trends and future of Social TV here.
As Social TV becomes more prevalent, publishers will need to ground themselves in the notion that the old ways of entertainment content and distribution are over- now is the time to give consumers more of what they want and less of what they don’t.
