Social Television

Postgraduate students at Loughborough University have been working with BT, a British multi-national telecommunications company, to become more aware of design within the context of business.

Our students worked with BT to develop a new social media service to complement their current TV package. The new service provides users with a comprehensive number of different features designed to take advantage of the growing trend towards twinning television with social media interaction. The features fall into two categories: Social Stream and Tagging.

Social stream

Social Stream will use live social media data to create programming lists and recommendations based on popular content. Users will also be able to view comments associated with certain programmes before or whilst they view them. Another new feature is the opportunity for users to have social media interaction directly on their television. This marks the first time that a service provider has integrated social media interaction in this way.

Tagging

Tagging will allow users to create unique tags which they can attach to programs, films, music etc. Based on their tags, certain content will be recommended. Furthermore, they will have the option to share tags or view the tags of friends.