Integrating Web & TV for Social Interaction

SOCIAL & INTERACTIVE TV
integrating Web & TV

Lora Aroyo
VU University Amsterdam

http://notube.tv

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 1

TAKE HOME MESSAGE
Integration of TV & (Social) Web


rethinking the role of metadata as advertisement for programs
allowing API access to TV devices
using URLs for program identiﬁcation

would lower costs and foster creativity,
and thereby beneﬁt consumers as well as providers and
manufacturers


• Making APIs (and prototypes) for linking the Social
Web with broadcast and on-demand television

• Using Linked data for serendipitous content
discovery

• Aggregating TV preference data from diverse
Web activities

• Enriching TV metadata

• Finding graph patterns to link users to content

• Adaptive advertisement

• Building on open source services

• Supporting real-time multi-screen exploration
of TV programs


EVOLUTION
we see how web & TV co-evolve


SOCIAL NETWORKS SHOW
WEB & TV TOGETHER
• high % of social media conversations are
around what people are watching on TV

• during UK/US prime-time scheduling:
• Twitter trending topics - TV related
• Twitter activity inﬂuence what people
decide to watch

• predominantly via second screens (not
speciﬁcally designed)


SECOND SCREEN: IN ACTION
42% UK adults discuss/comment on TV programs while
watching (YouGov Deloitte report, Aug 2010)

49% of UK Twitter users use Twitter regularly when watching TV
(BBC Audience Research Twitter survey, Aug 2010)


WHAT IS THE DRIVE?

• it’s not technology-driven

• people want to share (TV) experiences

• people want to be recognized (by what they are watching)

• people want to be heard (through contributions)

• young audience - very active


FRAGMENTATION OF
AUDIENCES
• in the current evolution of web & broadcast TV, we see a
fragmentation over multiple applications, devices &
websites

• not good for all
• consumers
• manufacturers
• developers
• creators & owners of content


DEVICES & CONTROLS

• many new TV and TV-like
devices, e.g.
• internet-connected TVs, e.g.
Samsung Yahoo Widgets TV
• set-top boxes, e.g. Boxee Box,
Apple TV and GoogleTV

• apps to control interaction
with second screen, e.g.
• MythTV, XBMC & Boxee iPhone/
Android remote controls


APPS FOR INTERACTION
• media directory apps:
• majority are incapable of
interacting with TV or
Web players, e.g. ‘Radio
Times TV guide’
• apps for speciﬁc
programs or events,
e.g. `The Million Pound
Drop' show, PickLive:
playing along during football
matches


ALL THIS RESULTS IN SILOS
we see fragmented solutions
where people need speciﬁc hardware/software
to participate in TV apps

SILOS POSE PROBLEMS
FOR USERS & BROADCASTERS
• difﬁcult for people to participate

• difﬁcult for broadcasters to monitor what’s going on

• potential value for participants is lost

• potential value for right holders (e.g. increased and engaged
audience, and feedback) is lost

• too much focus on formats & protocols instead of creative
solutions

KEY CHALLENGES
what problems do social TV developers need to solve?


CHALLENGES FOR
SOCIAL TV DEVELOPERS
1.How do we know what the person is watching?

•Both for broadcast and on-demand, we need to know in the
form of some kind of unique identiﬁers.

2.How do we locate additional information about
the program?

•Given a unique identiﬁer for a program, we need to locate
information, not broadcasted along with the program itself.


CHALLENGES FOR
SOCIAL TV DEVELOPERS
3.How do we locate apps or Web pages related to it?

• In addition, we need program-specific applications to be
launched, or Web pages to be navigated to (seamlessly
delivering complex applications using Web technologies without
locate-download-install-launch difficulties).

4.How can we manipulate it?

• We need a second screen environment for users to manipulate
the content, provide playback control, interact with first screen.


GUIDELINES


I. RETHINK THE ROLE OF
METADATA

• let metadata advert the content: let it ﬂow freely in the
public web and ﬁnd its viewers

• make metadata public and open: open in formats & licenses
drawing users via 3rd party apps

• rights issues: nothing compared to content rights

metadata is scaffolding for Future Web & TV


EXAMPLE:

• the BBC Backstage work with TV anytime shows the result in
the form of very creative apps


II. CREATE URLS FOR
CONTENT ITEMS
• easy sharing of info by giving programs a life through a URL:

• resolvable, machine processable URLs (JSON, RDF)

• for sharing information (about content), e.g. Wikipedia, IMDB

• for relating program instances cross broadcaster, e.g.
aggregated matching & discovery in the international Global
Web

program URLs makes it alive in the social web


EXAMPLE:
BBC
/PROGRAMS

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ry8lb

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/programmes/genres/drama

III. AGREE ON OPEN APIS

• to allow other apps to access & control TV playing device/app/web page

• what to see, e.g. change channel, play, pause

• to allow other apps to access metadata

• content identiﬁcation

• user identiﬁcation / authentication

• standards-based communication between controlling & controlled devices

open APIs for access & control


EXAMPLE:
APIS FOR RECORDING,
ANNOTATION & SEARCH

• smart phone-to-TV API, e.g. bookmarking, tag, annotate
content

• Web-based OAuth API for sharing activities streams


BENEFITS
beneﬁts for all stakeholders


I. BENEFITS TO AUDIENCES

• expect diverse, attractive, and accessible software & hardware
remotes

• more creative apps for viewing what to watch on TV (phone,
tablet etc.) and easier text entry

• simpler access to program info, for sharing in social web

• better second screen TV apps

• better recommendations

II. BENEFITS TO CONTENT
PRODUCERS

• less fragmented audience

• more participation & interest

• ability
to track aggregate usage and market that (from
broadcast via on-demand to archive)


III. BENEFITS TO DEVELOPERS

• manufacturersand developers have open and well-
documented APIs to support


BENCHMARK
guidelines for NoTuble metadata and apps


HOW NOTUBLE IS YOUR
METADATA?
• as a guideline and as a benchmark for TV metadata, we use a 5-star scheme
to judge TV metadata

make metadata available publicly (open license)

make metadata available in open format

create URLs for content items

link to additional items

use the linking to personalize (& socialize)


NOTUBLE METADATA
• this schema helps to determine the added value of metadata, for example:

• content availability (restricted by country 0.1 point, payed content 0.1 point,
free everywhere 1 point )

• metadata licensing (can others reuse the metadata)

• metadata schema quality (e.g. using standard schema's like tv-anytime)

• amount of metadata (only title, or much more)

• conceptualization or just keywords etc

• reuse of identiﬁers


USER MODELING

• personalization implies & assumes user (usage) modeling

• beneﬁts both sides

• better experience, more engagement

• better analysis of usage, better marketing

personalization not a burden (for providers) but
an opportunity


MAKING NEW
CONNECTIONS

• speciﬁc & meaningful
connections between:

• existing information
about people from the
Social Web


MAKING NEW
CONNECTIONS

• existing information
about people from the
Social Web

• data about video
content provided by
broadcasters


MAKING NEW
CONNECTIONS

• existing information about
people from the Social
Web

• data about video content
provided by broadcasters

• supplement video data with
background knowledge


ACTIVITY-BASED USER
PROFILES
• an example of advanced user modeling is the use of BBC
Linked Data in the generation of activity-based user proﬁles

• NoTube Beancounter can use DBpedia but also BBC PIDs in
Twitter-based proﬁling

• used for recommendation on the basis of social activity

• other examples following similar approach, e.g. music-related
recommendation based on music-related social data


SEMANTICS-BASED
RECOMMENDATION
• in NoTube recommendations are based on user TV viewing &
Social Web activities

• through the semantic relations, recommendations are given for
people, programs, channels and for genres (a rich, multi-faceted
approach)

• exploring pattern-based recommendations on top of LOD
semantics

• integrating classical statistical approaches for related programs


LOD PATTERNS & CONCEPT
MATCH

• direct match in
LOD concepts

• creative inﬂuence
• creative participation


RECOMMENDING
& INTERACTING IN GROUPS
• people want to share (TV) experiences

• integration with (social) web allows for recommending for &
interacting with groups

• typical trade-off watching TV - remaining in social group

• challenge to support social processes for trade-off

• examples: multi-user device (touch table), using social
networking systems to vote & discuss


SOCIAL TV SHOULD ENABLE

• Conversation: back-channel, recommendation & community
• content is the king; conversation is the content on web2
• conversation is the king
• Gamiﬁcation: playful, engaging & participative

• Personalization: users contribution, relevant & their stories

credit: Gary Hayes


COMMUNITY-BASED
EXPERIENCE

not a single TV-viewer activity any more


SOCIAL VIEWING SCENARIOS

for more details check out our blog at http://notube.tv


ADAPT INDIVIDUAL SECOND
SCREEN EXPERIENCE

for more details check out our blog at http://notube.tv


HOW NOTUBLE IS YOUR APP?

• we extend this benchmark from metadata towards
applications and software:

use NoTuble metadata

provide open APIs for accessing metadata

provide open APIs for controlling devices


STANDARDS

• in this open evolution, a lot is already happening.

• the industry shows many different parties offering partial
solutions

• W3C can help with API, protocols, speciﬁcations

• NoTube aims for NoTuble benchmarks

towards a coherent Web & TV ecosystem


OPPORTUNITIES

• engage through gaming, make sharing and feedback more
playful, e.g. rewards, sense of progress, curiosity

• linked content allows to ﬁnd alternative versions better ﬁtting
conditions of multilinguality and accessibility

• Twitter for individual, collaborative, trending recommendations

• support process of endorsement, e.g. celebrities


TAKE HOME MESSAGE
Integration of TV & (Social) Web


rethinking the role of metadata as advertisement for programs
allowing API access to TV devices
using URLs for program identiﬁcation

URLs are the foundation for the web
URLs can be the foundation for the Web & TV ecosystem
linking data is easier than linking devices
so, focus on metadata & URLs as well as APIs for
Web&TV

would lower costs and foster creativity,
and thereby beneﬁt consumers as well as providers and
manufacturers


• Stay tuned:
• http://notube.tv
• http://notube.tv/#blog
• @notube, #notube
• http://delicious.com/notube
• public-notube@few.vu.nl

• Videos:
• http://vimeo.com/user3487770


Integrating Web & TV for Social Interaction

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (6)

Similar to Integrating Web & TV for Social Interaction

Similar to Integrating Web & TV for Social Interaction (20)

More from Lora Aroyo

More from Lora Aroyo (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Integrating Web & TV for Social Interaction