Social TV: Zeebox empowers TV talent to engage with fans

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Published on Thursday, 17 May 2012 12:59

zeebox today announces an update to its popular social TV app that celebrities can use to draw fans into their shows, and enables TV viewers to instantly set up group chat rooms around their favourite shows. The new features enable instant sharing of TV reactions and create social viewing parties around key shows, being adopted by top TV celebrities

Part of zeebox’s continuing drive to innovate the second-screen experience through frequent ground-breaking updates to its app, the Shout Out and Group Chat features are designed to create a viral, social space around the most exciting TV shows on air.

The new Shout Out button enables viewers to react to must-comment telly by instantly messaging their emotions to friends and followers via zeebox, push notification, Twitter or Facebook. Shout Out promotes shared live TV viewing among friends, and is a powerful way for celebrities to drive audiences to their favourite shows and channels. Recent examples include Tom Jones on The Voice and LMFAO on Britain’s Got Talent.

Group Chat enables anyone in zeebox to share or tweet a link that instantly launches the zeebox app and a chat window where TV buddies can engage around their favourite show. With group chats of thousands of users possible, this feature will also be used by broadcasters and their key talent to create celebrity-driven chat rooms around the most social TV shows.

Both these features are a core part of zeebox’s intent to create a new, social TV Community, with two principles at its heart:

1. the seamless creation of TV viewing parties where spontaneous TV friends can meet and interact around their favourite shows – making broadcast TV relevant and communal in an of digital fragmentation
2. the empowerment of TV celebrities and show format owners to connect directly with audiences, increase engagement and interactivity, and to drive viewing traffic to the most relevant, live shows of the day

Simon Miller, zeebox Head of Product said:

“TV talent have discovered that zeebox can take their engagement with fans via Twitter to another level. By tweeting from zeebox and using the new community features, celebrities can bring their followers together in a shared social space – the zeebox show page – where the audience can engage whilst watching their favourite shows.”

Other features in the new zeebox release include: Twitter tribes, which let you see tweet streams for different teams during a big match or follow the stars on your favourite show; the ability to book programme reminders directly from the programme guide; and -- by popular demand -- the TV remote control function now has Auto and Manual modes.

The new release is available in the UK iTunes store now for iPhone, iPad, with Android and web versions due out within days.

Since launching in 2011, zeebox has led innovation in the market of social TV apps, uniquely enabling consumers to discover TV content through their extended social graph, to follow their favourite celebrities’ TV viewing, and to automatically get more information about the programmes they’re watching. zeebox knows what consumers are watching, and engages them with relevant content and ecommerce opportunities in synch with live TV.

Zeebox is available on the Web, on iPad, iPhone and Android smartphones at http://zeebox.com.