What the cable companies (and TiVo) could learn from Facebook
May 28th, 2008 . by Joshua BeilBy guest blogger, Joshua Beil
Whether you agree with the $15B valuation or not, Facebook has unleashed a pair of technical innovations that has fundamentally shaped the social media landscape: the first was the personal feed and the second was an open platform for third-party development. The former has been copied by other social networks like LinkedIn and spawned an entire cottage industry of startups around “lifecasting,” the most notable being FriendFeed. The later has resulted in over ten thousand applications developed to date, with a separate cottage industry having mushroomed around social networking applications – the most notable names being Slide and RockYou.
Both of Facebook’s innovations could and should be used by the cable companies (and TiVo) to reinforce its incumbent dominance in the battle for living room supremacy and fend off the onslaught of attacks underway, most notably from Apple, Netflix, and Microsoft’s Xbox. The key in both cases is in harnessing the power of the set top box, both its rich database and as a platform.
TV Viewing Feeds: As we officially enter the age of digital TV, with the right database in place, the cable companies ought to know all facets of our viewing behavior. This could be turned into a personal feed that would enable your social graph to know what you watch and/or record and when. This is probably way too much information for most, but key user-specified filters in place such as notifying you if your friend is watching (or watched) the same show, or noting shows that your friends have watched that you have never seen might be very valuable to some. An obvious problem that would need to be solved is the multiple members of a household watching the same TV, so there would need to be some sort of user login/authentication that takes place in order for such a service to work effectively.
Platform Leverage: What if instead of a walled garden viewing experience, our set top box had a set of APIs that allowed third party developers to write applications to talk to it? Combine that with a Bluetooth or WiFi transmitter baked into the device, and imagine the possibilities of communication, synchronization and convergence with your computer, smart phone, and yes, car’s AV system.
The cable companies have an opportunity to take advantage of the undeniable trends unfolding in the social media space and apply them directly to our television experience. Given the new and emerging technologies trying to disintermediate them, not doing so will quite possibly be their undoing.
Joshua Beil is the Director of Social Media & Technology at a publicly traded telecommunications company. He was previously the CEO and cofounder of Skywave Broadband, Inc, a commercial WiFi service provider in Hawaii. He was named one of Pacific Business News’ Forty Under 40 for 2006, and in 2005, he was named a High Tech Leader by the Pacific Technology Foundation. Before co-founding Skywave, Mr. Beil was VP of Research and Development for the market research boutique, Tier 1 Research, where he covered the Internet infrastructure sector as an analyst, and negotiated and sold subscriptions to Tier 1’s research services. He maintains a private consulting practice specializing in the Internet infrastructure industry. Josh has previously served as the Senior Analyst for Exodus Communications as well as the internationally known market research firm, IDC. He holds a Certificate in E-Business from UCSC Extension, and he graduated with honors from the University of California at Santa Cruz with a major in Psychology.
Blog: www.beilblog.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jhbeil