Social TV Merging TV and Social Networking
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happyfacetv
The world today revolves around the latest technology. This is especially true for the younger generation, or ‘generation Y’, who are keen on keeping up with latest trends. Even more so, social networking has become one of the most popular activities. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter are in the limelight. Media technologists have combined a forever in style telecommunication medium (the television), with a new method of connecting to the social world (social networking) to introduce Social TV to the market. What is social TV? In simple terms, it is the joining together of social networking and TV viewing. Technology experts realized that these two entities, though separated in theory, were naturally converging (but needed a little push). There are numerous applications that allow individuals to chat and connect in real time. It was observed that in many cases, individuals would be watching television shows while still connecting with their friends through their mobile phones. As a result, this became an opportunity for Social TV to come to birth. Some of the simpler more observable uses of Social TV are the inclusion of viewer “tweets” during TV shows. Viewers would tweet their thoughts on the show, which would then be streamed in a hashtag on the TV screen. TV shows today also have Facebook pages where fans can give their views on the show, get clips of upcoming episodes and even carry out polls on the episodes and actors. Social TV is a relatively new development, and various other expansions are underway. These are meant to further ease the social interaction during TV viewing. Further, this would allow for social interaction in real-time during TV shows rather than before or after the shows. Some of the Social TV developments already on the market include applications such as IntoNow, Tunerfish and Miso. This is not to say that Social TV as a concept was discovered over the last few years. In actual fact, this was already an idea in 2000, the idea being to create a forum for viewers to interact during television viewing. However, this proved difficult due to the cumbersome shared connections and the User Interface design, as it disrupted TV viewing in general. The breakthrough that Social TV was looking for came with the development of social networking, since this encourages the creation of groups with individuals who share common interests, one of course, being TV. Today, the concept of social TV is no longer limited to the traditional television screen. It now includes the use of computers and hand-held devices such as cell phones or netbooks. You may in all likelihood already be experiencing Social TV, but it now has a name. And if the speed of technological advancement is anything to go by, Social TV will further improve in the near future.
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