Social TV from a Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Perspective

Social Tv

Social TV systems allow collocated as well as distributed spectators watching television together. The focus of such systems does not only lie on the presentation of the media to all spectators, but to allow the spectators to keep in touch with each other. This requires keeping the spectators informed about each other, providing them with communication facilities, and possibly with further support for their activity. For instance, Social TV 2 is a prototype system that extends a media center software with communication and ambient awareness facilities to connect distributed spectators (Harboe et al., 2008), and Telebuddies is a system that enhances IDTV set-top boxes with the possibility of annotating media content and user profiles to allow the realisation of enriched interaction with other spectators (Luyten et al., 2006).

The conjoint watching of television can happen at the same time and in real time, but a time-shifted shared experience is also possible. In the following we introduce four typical Social TV systems: a prototype system allowing for a shared television experience in real-time; a low-fidelity and a high-fidelity commercial systems allowing for a time-shifted communication and watching of television; and a system that uses the past media consumption history of the spectators to enhance distribution of media.