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
YouTube to Your TV: The Shift of YouTube Content Creators to Network Television
YouTube’s development from a small company acting as a mere repository of home videos that allowed users to share their memories operating under the tagline “Broadcast Yourself” to the frontrunner of a multi-billion dollar industry has been nothing short of remarkable. As some content creators have now escalated in popularity to the level of pop culture and social icons, many have begun or even completed the transition to the traditional major media industries. While some have been successful, particularly in the shift from YouTube to the music industry, of which the most iconic is that of Justin Bieber, others have found the transition to be challenging. Content creators like Lucas Cruikshank, the developer of “Fred” on YouTube, and Dane Boedigheimer, author of the “Annoying Orange,” have both made the shift to cable and have not seen the public reception that they enjoyed within the confines of YouTube. This paper explores the issue of why certain types of content shift seamlessly to traditional media while others do not, and why YouTube content creators have recently struggled in transitioning to traditional media outlets. This paper is a meta-analysis of prior market research on YouTube uploader demographics, the market they are attempting to shift to, and other rival online video markets like Hulu which exhibit an opposing shift of traditional media content onto the Internet. Network video content is shifting to the Internet partly in order to capture a market that has eluded them since the introduction of online video (namely young audiences). This paper explores why user-generated content creators are shifting in the opposite direction to network television. Interestingly, these opposing shifts indicate a similar understanding of the media market from the perspective of content creators, both professional and amateur. Both seek to capitalize on the segment of the population that they struggle to reach through their established method of content distribution. However, YouTube content creators find traditional media a tough market to enter, as the shift to network programming does not allow them to tailor content to their viewers’ needs in the way that YouTube allows, and the difference between the YouTube format and a traditional thirty minute segment makes the shift even more difficult for them. Because of the differences in the two formats, it is likely that YouTube creators in the current market will continue to find challenges in attempting the shift to network programming.
Social- and Interactive-Television Applications Based on Real-Time Ambient-Audio Identification
This paper describes mass personalization, a framework for combining mass media with a highly personalized Web-based experience. We introduce four applications for mass personalization: personalized content layers, ad hoc social communities, real-time popularity ratings and virtual media library services. Using the ambient audio originating from the television, the four applications are available with no more effort than simple television channel surfing. Our audio identification system does not use dedicated interactive TV hardware and does not compromise the user’s privacy. Feasibility tests of the proposed applications are provided both with controlled conversational interference and with “living-room” evaluations.