The Future of TV chat: A Q&A with Integra5’s Steve Borelli

On why it’s not just child’s play: We’ve heard a lot about digital natives, and we throw them into the same bucket as Generation V. The idea is that people want social networks and SMS and the evolution of always-on instant communication. These things we’ve seen happening in our business that led us to think there is an opportunity to enhance that experience, including on the TV…This is not only the 18-to-24 demographic interested in it, it is any Gen V always-connected types.

On moving from communicating to socializing: Media Chat is the first application in the suite. Why is it compelling? Consumers are already behaving this way. They are sitting around while watching a TV program, sending text messages or jumping on the PC to email to communicate with others also watching the same TV program. That behavior doesn’t seem to be new. The evidence has been proven by American Idol and others that TV is an incredible source for creating these affinity groups. We’re trying to take that exact experience – be able to have that closed group of buddies and friends that you want to invite to share a program with. Make the invitation simple and easy for the TV, instead of one-to-one mobile text, and make it a more social experience. Show that chat right on the TV, but don’t get too carried away. At Integra5, we’ve been in and around interactive TV for awhile, even though our slant has been the communication piece. We know that doing a lot of text via the remote control or on a wireless keyboard is hard to do. So we want to let people text with what they are comfortable with, their mobile phone, and away we go.

On bringing in the other screens: Media Friends leverages the TV, mobile device and computer as well. We’ve also had enough experience to know the TV is not a great place to do a lot of administrative functions like creating your buddy list. Whether it’s TV caller ID or anything else, we’ve always provided a customer control portal to control Integra5 services. You go into the portal and add pictures, nicknames, setup settings. If you don’t want TV Caller ID popping up, you can deactivate it and so on. Media Friends users can create their own buddy list on the PC.