Business Models for Social TV

Leuven.
The third speaker in this EuroITV 2009 session is Sander Limonard, who explores the potential for the development of a 'social TV' experience (and the underlying business models). The market in this area remains very immature so far, and business opportunities are still being explored; positioning models in the value network is critical, as is the link with functional architecture.

There are two major service concepts here: first, those enabling social TV experiences, which variously enable media-enriched communication within social networks (e.g. by sharing videos or tracking the co-presence of distributed users by showing whether other friends are watching the same TV channel) or communication-enriched media (e.g. by aggregating viewer ratings, persistent and shareable user profiles, or building on co-presence by adding direct communication features).

These two concepts (which are not mutually exclusive, of course) can be combined in a value network - constituting the second major service concept. They constitute a continuum from communication-enriched media to media-enriched communication, which in turn has content and application, packaging, distribution, and consumption dimensions.

What service providers need to be involved here? Included should be telecom operators, games console developers, and CE vendors (e.g. Apple with its iPod and iPhone brands). There is also a question of whether this should proceed under a proprietary or an open platform model.

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