Social TV: The Future of Television in the Internet Age
Television's influence on culture and society has been widely acknowledged for many years. On the other hand, with the diffusion of the web and of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, used in concert with television, the TV experience has become much more interactive and it is now impossible not to acknowledge that television has also become a driving force for social interaction. Furthermore, the parallel diffusion of internet videos and user generated content, fostered by YouTube in particular, has provided the population with a different approach to media and television in particular: consumers have also become producers. This work analyzes how the different technological improvements have changed the definition of television. Special attention is given to how Facebook and Twitter have influenced some of TV's fundamental properties such as liveness, character-centric storylines and flow and to what the YouTube phenomena means for television. The thesis concludes with a forecast about television's future, which confirms the main argument of this thesis: television is increasingly social. Thesis Supervisor: Michael Cusumano Title: SMR Distinguished Professor of Management
Watching YouTube: Extraordinary Videos by Ordinary People
Table of Contents Introduction...11. Home Movies in a Global Village...322. The Home and Family on YouTube...633. Video Diaries: The Real You in YouTube...1014. Women of the 'Tube...1345. The YouTube Community...1666. The YouTube Wars: Elections, Religion, and Armed Conflict...2237. The Post-television Audience...259Conclusion...299Endnotes...320Bibliography...397
Virtual social clubs: meeting places for the Internet community
This paper describes a system designed to support a range of 'virtual clubs', video-enabled meeting places on the Internet emulating a real-world club where friends, acquaintances and business colleagues meet in a social context. The distinguishing feature of virtual clubs is support for multiple, simultaneous group interaction, where users can move dynamically from one group to another, and participate in a range of activities. An architecture supporting application development has been implemented, incorporating session management software and multipoint layered video. Features of the system include dynamic session management, flexible policy support, and novel user interfaces. Several virtual club applications are under development.