SocialTV - Time for some answers

written by: Richard Gale

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Published on Tuesday, 04 May 2010 19:36

I've been quiet for a couple of weeks now as I have been working on a new project related to socialTV. The project started when I tried to write a blog post that defined socialTV - what I have discovered was that socialTV is really a new ecosystem that is developing and that the second screen services, connectedTV services, widget et al. all are just a part of that ecosystem.

So defining socialTV was hard as everyone was using the term for the individual part of the ecosystem that they were working on. That project is nearing completion and I would hope to be able to blog about my results by the end of the week.

What I found though was that there was no real consumer research into socialTV though - many companies are developing technology, many start-ups are launching, many bloggers (including myself) are talking about socialTV - but no one had actually spoken to the consumers.

With the help of my wife (who runs a media research company) I put together a short survey that tries to answer a couple of key questions.

- do people want socialTV
- when do they want to use socialTV
- what functionality do they want from their socialTV

The survey can be found here - it would be great if people could complete the survey and pass onto their friends/family. I'm particularly interested in women at the moment as currently I have a heavy male skew.

Once the results are in, I'll be blogging about each area of the results so that hopefully we can all get a better understanding about what consumers actually believe and want socialTV to be.

Richard Gale is the European Director of Marketing & Sales for Playboy Europe having worked in the broadcast industry for nearly a decade, looking after 15 linear channels that run across 27 countries from the UK down to New Zealand. He also runs a small agency set up to handle consultancy work for start ups and media companies.