Whilst the mainstream media players are quietly pushing their technology and innovation teams to the maximum across the world in a race to marry Social Media and TV, most of the public remains oblivious and left out of the loop, mainly due to offerings being in Proof of Concept (POC) stage or not even… and still on the chalkboard.

However, one sector, the Hotel and Hospitality is one of the earlier beneficiaries from the advances that have been made provision and delivery of TV and other services over Internet Protocol will likely be early corporate adopters of Social TV now that network technologies that include the provision of Ethernet networks in hotels is now a standard requirement. Add a wireless keyboard and an advanced TV remote, you can do pretty much anything.

And buzz is starting to generate in this sector as hotels are coming out of a slump and are looking for new ways to attract the web and media savvy 25-45 year old, Gen X and Y generations who are a lucrative target group in many of their marketing strategies. Social TV in a hotel would certainly be an historical PR victory for any marketing team.

IPTV distribution system in hotels is pretty straight forward… providing high quality, full screen digital TV over an Ethernet network using an existing IP network. Not only can digital satellite and terrestrial channels can be broadcast directly to TV’s anywhere in a hotel – but now there’s the opportunity to implement Social TV as well.

We live in a networked society, and our contact list, for most of us who will never see a cradle to grave job, is paramount. Imagine if you could not only sleep in a hotel, but also create a profile in the social TV network and then find others in similar business paths, or potential new partners right in the hotel… whom you could have lunch with or meet up in a pub. Or imagine you could organize short seminars, get people to sign up and do mini ‘unconferences’ or conferences with others whose businesses can converge with you own.

This is great, not only for the guests, but also for the hotel. They will not only be able to offer better service to their clients, but also be able to come to understand their own demographics more… with a Social TV Facebook social media scenario or clone, there’s plenty of data to be shared to everyone, including the hotel… giving them more opportunity to build better services.

Want to book a restaurant? Do it on the TV. Add it to your bill in the Hotel’s Property Management Software (PMS) program and don’t worry about pulling out a credit card. Feel like going to a concert or sporting event while you are in town? Click or type and buy.

Want to download an iPhone or mobile map application with directions from anywhere back to the hotel and listings of all the offerings of the city you are visiting? Plug your PDA or mobile phone into a USB port and suck it down. Need to book the conference room? Do it on the TV. Need to order some food? Pick up the TV remote and choose from room service or an array of restaurants that deliver in the area.

I could even see, in the foreseeable future, a Wii or Xbox network for gaming and sports in hotels. Why not? Feel like a bit of tennis but can’t book a court? Play your neighbor in room 602. Or shoot at the guys in rooms 562 and 788.

It’s only a matter of time before television becomes social in Hotels because it’s a perfect space for rolling out this technology.

I’d be intrigued by a system that automatically feeds me information about what is the most popular Video on Demand flick in the hotel… what others are watching and even reviews of the movies from other guests. A good recommendation engine built into a social TV hotel network could take care of a lot of things… including which restaurants are hot, bars are not, and where are the cool places that tourists don’t normally go.

Based on demographic data built up by the hotels social TV network, hotels could easily build up relationships with local strategic partners that are popular with their guests – offering discounts and other deals.

Want a taxi? Francois, the friendly, is the best in Brussels. Everyone raves about him on the network.

Or imagine you could reach out externally vis a vis the Hotel’s social TV network with Skype (VOIP and chat application) or Facebook and share with you family at home.

Watching television or listening to music together is often a shared activity with co-located family members and it is something to gather around. But can technology support this kind of experience while apart?

Yes. It’s possible. But I am not sure anyone in the industry is going in this direction yet.

When turning your social TV presence on in the hotel, you could also expose you current status on media usage to those at home and in the hotel (what music you are listening to, what program you are watching or game you are playing). Others could join in on the media session that you are currently running and can then scale to other levels of connection.

If the hotel industry manages to adhere to one or two IPTV system which includes social TV, preferably open source, or finds another way to standardize the product, then your social profile can even be ported to multiple hotels, saving you time and work plugging your details into every hotel you stay in.

Orca Interactive’s recent deal with SoftAtHome and Viaccess looks to be a strong contender for setting a social TV standard for the entire broadcast industry. Backed by France Telecom aka Orange, there’s over 200 million subscribers worldwide on the books and, though a minority are on the digital TV program, there’s still strong potential to set the bar in the European industry in particular.

Orca and Viaccess were smart to tie the knot with Softathome. Their Open API and plug in, plug out architecture promises to facilitate easy development and rapid scaling with an easy frame not only for third party developers to innovate and create revenue streams, but also the system is built to hitch up to almost any existing IPTV box or configuration. Their attitude is reminiscent of online open source leaders and if it plays out right, a rather large developer community will be built up fast – such as open source CMS Joomla has done over the past five years in the web world – to literally hundreds of thousands of builders and users driving innovation and knowledge sharing to build a better product for everyone.

Building blocks of the SoftAtHome Operating Platform are deployed today in more than 6 million Home Gateways and one million Set Top Boxes on the Orange network across Europe.

Putting it in hotels will be simple.

It looks like, on paper, Orca Interactive will go after the ISP’s and other IPTV suppliers and SoftAtHome will be targeting the home and possibly the hospitality and hotel markets.

SoftAtHome is a software company created by Orange, Thomson and Sagem Communications to deliver total convergence through a home operating platform for the home digital environment. It fosters a new ecosystem made up of service providers, 3rd party application developers, integrators and hardware vendors to accelerate the advent of the Digital Home. The company is headquartered in France with development and sales teams in France and Belgium. The Home Operating Platform enables Service Providers to deliver and monetize convergent applications for the digital home.

Orca Interactive (LSE-ORCA) is a leading provider of IPTV middleware and applications, empowering broadband operators and service providers to deliver broadcast TV, video on demand (VOD), personal video recording (PVR), home media and other compelling interactive services.

Viaccess SA, a France Telecom company, delivers solutions for digital pay television and secured content distribution. Its mission is the development, production and marketing of conditional access and DRM-based systems for all types of networks, broadcast (satellite, cable, terrestrial, MMDS, DVB-H, etc.) and broadband (DSL,FTTH, 3G, etc.). The constant growth of the pay TV market and digital content not only boosts direct to home distribution by satellite, cable, terrestrial and broadband over IP networks, but it also represents an enormous opportunity for the entertainment industry.

Richard Kastelein, a social media strategist and publisher, is CEO of new startup, Agora Media Group LLC (link), a new creative and innovation agency based in London, UK. He works with partners in the global travel industry and in emerging technology such as Social TV. Kastelein has been building online communities for over a decade and is an Open Source evangelist. He’s an adept team player – a publisher, writer, photographer, marketing director, web developer and graphic designer with more than 20 years experience in the development and operation of newspapers, magazines, web media and marketing of multinational, companies in international settings.

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by Richard G. Kastelein

If we all thought the Facebook and Twitter social media growth phenomena were extraordinary, wait until Social TV hits your screens.

And it’s not as far away as you think — not only with the logical IPTV market, but also terrestrial TV. I recently attended the International Broadcast Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, which bills itself as ’The content creation management delivery experience’. IBC2008 attracted 49,000+ visitors and 1,300+ exhibitors from more than 130 countries. This year is expected to be bigger. Last year, I was part of a team exhibiting at MIPTV in Cannes, and was expecting something a bit similar… but this was almost all about hardware and software and less about the actual formats and programs. However, this was not a disappointment. For embedded in the show there were some jewels… which have profoundly altered my view of Social Media, the future and the implication of reach that will touch billions not millions.

One diamond-in-the-rough was Israeli-based Orca Interactive (link), who was pitching their Social TV product, which was still in Proof of Concept (POC) and this was their first showing to the general public. Orca specializes in IPTV middleware and applications. But they are aggressively moving into social TV. I spoke to CTO Ofer Weintraub (Ph.D.) on their strategy and the nuts and bolts of the technology on offer.

“This is truly social TV — there is nobody on the market with similar offerings,” said Weintraub. He added there is an SDK (Software Development Kit) available now for select partners, but they certainly would not rule out an open API in the future.

And there is tight integration at the database level with website Trustedopinion.com. I discussed the integration with TO founder and CEO Shahar Smirin — whose site topped a million users recently.

“It’s a natural fit,” said Smirin, who then went on to show his web product and how he’s built a viral invite and social ’consolidation’ framework focussed on opinion where one can pile everyone (all your friends, imported/invited) from most major social media sites and really focus on what your friends think about entertainment (mainly movies and theatre for now).

There is synergy between Orca and TO, but let’s now look at Orca. And why this marriage could take social media truly to the masses via IPTV.

One thing to note… Orca Interactive is owned by France Telecom and the 2008 M&A has positioned this duo to take Social TV to a mass global audience. The acquisition last year means that they are well positioned near the ear of one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators and proprietor of the multinational Orange brand. Orange has a base of almost 200 million customers in 30 countries.

There’s nothing overly extraordinary in the makeup of the product — it’s nothing that Internet social media buffs have not seen before. But for TV users, this is going to revolutionize the way they watch TV… from being a passive, solitary, experience into an active, community one.

Here below, you can see recommendations from your friends on a particular movie or program. You can see related VOD products. You can rate it yourself, you can recommend it to a friend, you can see further information and you can send it as a gift to another person (purchased shows are good for 48 hours).

Here you can see your friends’ profiles, chat with them, send them a gift, see their recommends or send them a message.

Here you can send a gift to one or more friends.

And remember, this will all be integrated with your monthly billing. There will be no need for pulling out a credit card and security issues, there will be no need for digging deep to remember your Paypal password. No, the bill arrives like any other or is likely debited from your bank account automatically these days.

One can also set their mood — and then recommendations will be laid out according to complex algorithms and data mining based on your friends and your own data and viewing habits.
As Facebook revolutionized the way advertisers can niche-target their online demographics, Social TV will profoundly change the ad agencies and marketing departments will offer their wares in the television realm. Neilson ratings seem vague, less targetable and will likely become obsolete in TV 2.0.

Equally as interesting, but taking a different tack, is another gem called NDS (link), partially owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which has a reach to over 107 million pay-TV subscribers worldwide. Their latest product, Social TV was also in POC stage and looks a lot more like ’widgetized’ TV rather than a singular network.

Their model is quite different, but also appealing and unique for a number of reasons. One being it lends itself more to an iPhone app store scenario, with plans for an open API, which positions it well for social media developers and long tail monetization of the social TV landscape. But monetization or not will be decided by the operators not NDS. It also has impeccable design with a beautiful interface.

Obtaining details was a bit sketchy due to their PR person being in meetings and there was, understandably, some hesitancy in getting anyone to go on the record.

However, one of the demo managers did talk to me about some interesting API integration potential with Flickr for instance. If you see something interesting on TV you can be simply one click away from viewing images of that place, object or person. Conceivably the same could be done with the Youtube API in the video space or even Lastfm for music for that matter.

Social networking is also alive and well on Verizon’s FiOS TV and new features are being added such as Facebook and Twitter Widgets.  The new Widget Bazaar applications marketplace is located within FiOS TV’s Interactive Media Guide.

Verizon has worked with social media innovators Facebook Connect, Twitter, ESPN, Veoh, blip.tv, and Dailymotion to create a converged Internet-to-television experience that lets FiOS TV subscribers connect with others while watching TV, plus search and view a variety of online, personal PC-based videos on their television screens. Verizon also plans an open development platform (SDK) to permit developers to write interactive FiOS TV applications that will be available through the Widget Bazaar.

Customers are saying they love the new “social TV” Widgets, but they want more.  They want to send Tweets, not just look at them.  They want to create their own unique Facebook status messages.

According to Shawn Strickland, vice president, marketing for Verizon Telecom, Verizon is working with some popular companies on the Web to create the foundation for a high-quality, engaging Internet-to-TV experience.

A recent report by The Nielsen Company found that there are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to social media sites. Also, the number of American users frequenting online video destinations has also increased by 339 percent since 2003.

Subscribers can Tweet about the TV show they are watching or search and follow their friends’ Tweets. Viewers can also update their Facebook status with their own messages. All of this is simply done via the FiOS TV remote control and an onscreen keyboard.

A Belgian company called Zappware also launched social networking features for its “iView Core” services suite at IBC09. And they had a demo showing how the add-on allows the viewer to connect with friends and family to:

• see what they are watching on their TVs
• exchange favourite lists of TV programmes and VOD movies
• recommend TV programmes or VOD movies to one another
• send VOD movie gifts to their friends
• lock their TV screens onto one another and watch the same content

Koen Swings, CTO & Managing Partner Zappware:

“Social networking has been a buzz word in the past few years, in particular on the internet. With these extensions to our EPG, VOD and PVR products, we now extend social networking from the PC domain to the TV domain, because we are convinced that there is no better environment for sharing TV experiences than the TV itself. In a world, in which people are continuously seeking to connect and in which consumers are willing to embrace new technologies that allow them to connect better and more often, these social networking features on TV will be highly appreciated by viewers. Operators that include these features in their iDTV offering, will be able to offer their subscribers a cross-platform social networking experience, hence adding value to their triple or quadruple play offer and resulting in increased subscriber loyalty.”

So at the end of the day, this is a win, win, win for all — TV stations get better data on their viewers and offer convergence with web ideas and sites, viewers get interactive community-oriented, social television and can make interesting viewing choices based on mood and network of friends, web-based community and social media sites can make more headway into IPTV and broadcast TV, still the Tour de Force of media, and entrepreneurs and developers find a new medium to develop and monetize via new, open-source-philosophy-driven API and SDK environs.

Richard Kastelein, a social media strategist and publisher, is CEO of new startup, Agora Media Group LLC (link), a new creative and innovation agency based in London, UK. Kastelein has been building online communities for over a decade and is an Open Source evangelist. He’s an adept team player – a publisher, writer, photographer, marketing director, web developer and graphic designer with more than 20 years experience in the development and operation of newspapers, magazines, web media and marketing of multinational, companies in international settings.

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