Social networkers want TV airtime

Social networkers are looking to score some airtime, with 36 percent of them wanting to access their networks via TV screens, according to an ABI Research survey released Thursday.

The survey of more than 1,000 households found that younger consumers are most interested in chatting and messaging with friends while watching TV. Middle-aged adults want a more passive experience, such as the ability to check on status updates via their TV sets. And those over 50 are most interested in knowing what their friends are watching.

"Just as video entertainment is moving fluidly across various screens, so is social media," Jason Blackwell, a senior ABI Research analyst, said in a statement. "We've seen that consumers find increased value through shared entertainment experiences and want to explore and deepen these experiences through communities of interest, and that's what's social TV will ultimately do."

Intel, for one, is banking on that notion. The chip giant and Yahoo are looking to bring the Internet and interactivity to consumers' TVs.

Intel has conducted studies to gauge the pulse of consumers and has found a strong interest in connecting with friends and family via the TV, which falls within the purview of social networking.

Yahoo, meanwhile, is developing its Yahoo Widget Channel, which aims to allow network-enabled applications to run on TVs. Social-networking site MySpace has partnered with the project, providing a MySpace widget to let people access their profiles, messages, status updates, and other features.

[redwall_hp]

*Why?* I want to see TVs go away entirely. Everything they do can just as easily be done with a computer.

[paulsecic]

I'm not buying a new HDTV until the one Ii bought last year.

[xylyx3d]

exactly. tv are superfluous, they should be gotten rid of and replaced by computers and internet broadcasting.

[Super2online]

The ideal scenario is that a computer box is installed when the home is built with slide out components (cards) much the same way as in-home audio equipment is now installed and then configured with the assistance of a laptop and software. This allows you to quickly add whatever functionality you want.

Then you just add monitors at whatever size you want into any room with wall mounted HDMI connectors. Speakers are pre-wired into every room, a wireless keyboard and mouse is used with a switcher from the remote.

Now you have all the interactivity you want. Add microphones into rooms that might benefit from that and you can enable voice command as well. This is how I plan to do it in my next new home. The tech is here now, why worry about what Intel is going to do later!

[Super2online]

I forgot to mention, I already currently have much of this with an HP Vista box with Media Center in my living room.

We launched Live Chat on Livestation to allow people to chat while watching live TV on their computers with the Livestation player a few months ago and we can support the statements above. We constantly have up to 100 people actively chatting on the most popular channels.

www.livestation.com

[Patricia-9]

The internet is not going to take away the TV set in your living room. It will modify it, to where instead of TV shows being piped in via the broadcast network, it'll be the IP/broadband network. The experience will be the same but there'll probably be touch screen interactivity. You'll be able to the same on your laptop or handhelds. This has always been what the internet is designed to do. It is a platform like radio or TV and has is designed to replace both (along with phone, mobile phone, etc.) because the internet platform is more reliable, more accessible and device agnostic than radio, your landline telephone, television, etc. Wal-Mart actually has a pretty cool in store display that runs on flat panel TVs piping in content over the internet, with touch screen's, etc. That's about the first look of what it'll eventually look like in the home.

The stats mentioned are basically consistent to what the demographics do with internet use overall. It's not exclusive to video. Companies will probably make the bigger mistakes in designing what the internet and interactivity components should be for its particular audience than dishing up video to the wrong demographic.