Dual-screen app for smartphone and iPad offers viewers social network updates, viewing figures and fact tags in real time
Following live Twitter commentaries from the likes of the Daily Mirror's 3am column and Caitlin Moran has become an indispensable part of watching The X Factor or Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday nights. Suddenly, watching primetime TV without Twitter or Facebook feels like you're missing a shared event.
Until this week, no startup or broadcaster had made a convincing attempt to capitalise on this so-called "dual-screen phenomenon". The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky all have smartphone and iPad apps, but none display updates from social networking sites.
Enter Zeebox, a new iPad app and website that combines social networking, live programme information and real-time viewing figures in a way that manages to complement the latest episode of Doctor Who or Downton Abbey. That is feat enough, but the free app also turns into a remote control for internet-connected TVs.
Zeebox is the brainchild of Anthony Rose, the former chief technology officer responsible for the BBC's iPlayer, and Ernesto Schmitt, a former marketing executive at EMI.
"In many ways the last 10 years have fundamentally shaped how we all expect to consume entertainment, and that's often driven by technology," says Schmitt. "Technological change is driving fundamental consumer change. But TV has remained unchanged since the 1970s. That struck us as untenable."
Schmitt says they could not have launched Zeebox six months ago, but a recent tipping point in Britons' use of smartphones and social networks meant now is the right time for such a "racy" idea.
Britons' appetite for media multitasking is indisputable. The regulator Ofcom found it in abundance last year, and Zeebox's own study of 4,800 13 to 65-year-olds earlier this year found 57% of us "often or almost always" send emails or browse social networks while watching TV. Broadcasters are waking up to this, too. In the US, viewers of The X Factor can vote via Twitter's direct messaging function (no plans for a UK launch yet, we're told).
Zeebox is nothing if not ambitious. From the iPad app's homepage, users can see in real time which channel the majority of Zeebox users are watching, giving a snapshot of what the nation is viewing. It tells users whether viewership is "booming", "steady" or ? avert your eyes, Simon Cowell ? "plummeting".
Several broadcasters and programme makers have asked Zeebox for this real-time data so they can analyse viewer sentiment during live programmes, according to Schmitt.
But the app isn't just an electronic programme guide with bells on. Alongside a stream of programme-related tweets and a chat box sits the company's "secret sauce", dubbed Zeetags.
Zeetags offer a short precis of Wikipedia information about any given topic, place, person or thing mentioned in the programme you are watching, as well as links to related news or products. For example, Zeetags profiles of Pakistan cricketers Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt appeared during BBC's 1pm news bulletin on Tuesday during a report on the duo's spot-fixing verdict.
Schmitt describes Zeebox as Google for TV ? "we spider live TV, extract content and bring users together ? and cites the recent MediaGuardian Edinburgh international television festival speech given by executive chairman Eric Schmidt who said: "If content is king, context is its crown".
Early usage of Zeebox on the iPad, Apple's app of the week since its launch last week, has "completely blown us away", says Schmitt. He won't give a precise figure, but claims tens of thousands of downloads in the UK alone ? a figure he claims is growing by a third each day. More significantly, Schmitt says the average session length for each user is 30 minutes ? indicating most users have Zeebox open for the duration of a programme.
Though Schmitt doesn't mention paid arrangements, he says Zeebox is in talks with broadcasters and advertisers about using its dataset. Zeebox also takes an affiliate cut of transactions sold through Amazon or iTunes from the app. In future, he says, advertisers could correspond their on-screen ad with marketing materials inside the app.
"Fundamentally, this is a consumer-facing proposition," Schmitt says. "If a massive audience engages with it [it will generate revenue], whether or not broadcasters are interested in the data feeds is kind of irrelevant."
If the rise of the "dual screen" is the latest trend in live TV, Zeebox represents the newest frontier in the increasingly symbiotic relationship between TV, social media and new technology.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/nov/02/zeebox-brings-tv-twitter-together
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