Thought I would share my winning pitch for The Netherlands Deloitte’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions 2010 Tech Visionary for futurist views on Social TV and Media Convergence.

I wrote it on the train on the way down… I actually forgot half of it and kind of made it all up again once I got up there. I had two minutes to pitch… in front of about 200 of Holland’s tech community who voted by SMS.

My name is Richard Kastelein, I am a Canadian of Dutch heritage and am currently working a Chief Strategy officer for a startup in Groningen called Worldticketshop as well as building a creative and innovation agency called Agora Media Group in London.

How many of you have young children out there?

In five years, your children and mine will laugh at the old days when certain programs were available only at certain times. We will too.

On demand TV  is just part of the great change we are going to see in the future… where media will be ubiquitous, and will no longer be the passive experience we now see today.

It’s called TV Everywhere.

I am going to go through four quick points.

1.       Production. The rise of User Generated Content has already and greatly shifted the Internet landscape and will do the same for TV. Merged media will be everywhere, video, audio, photography, 3D and more.

2.       Delivery – Entertainment will be available in the cloud – everywhere, on demand and available to anyone, anywhere.

3.       Consumption – This will be profoundly changed due to the future convergence of the Web and TV, where web widgets become part of the TV experience and viewing culture will be radically changed due to the inclusion of recommendation engines which will offer true reflection of consumer needs and wants.

4.        And lastly, Monetization. Last year, it was noted by MTV here that content companies are now driven by control of Intellectual Property. And that has too and will change. Business models will change. I call it tCommerce and it will also be a paradigm shift for the TV industry. Last year MTV also mentioned that new business models will need to come into place. We feel that affiliation models will rise – profit sharing rather than profit hoarding. The ability to shop on TV will be seamless and simple allowing for revenue sharing between the broadcasters and advertisers.

Already new players in the social tv space are building API’s and SDK’s to allow developers to make the shift from iPhone and Facebook to new models on TV. Yahoo Connected has an Open API, Europe ’s HBBTV will likely be Open Source software as it’s based largely on Open IPTV and even BBC’s Canvas in the UK is pushing towards open standards.

I will wrap this up by saying that it’s my feeling that this could be the next ‘bubble’ in the market as TV is going be decentralized and it will, in the future, be owned by the audience in many ways. Unlike TV today…. Such as in the USA, where the networks are publically owned and contracting – with no sign of growth in the future.

Thanks for your time and feel free to contact me at the borrel if you are interested in chatting further. We are working on building products for this new space.

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This article is a guest post by Paul Johnson and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Agora Media Group editorial staff. ( Twitter of Paul Johnson is @tweets4pj )
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We did it!

The prediction by CEO Richard Kastelein has received plenty of votes, enabling him/Agora Media to be present at the Deloitte Technology, Media and Telecom event the outlook for 2010 and further. This is the chance for him to be recognized as a ‘Tech Visionary’ representing Agora Media – and further – the entrepreneurial community of the Netherlands.

Richard’s prediction is in line – of course – with Agora Media’s outlook of the future in terms of Media Convergence and the rise of Social TV.

His entry:

Media Convergence and Social TV
If we all thought the Facebook and Twitter social media growth phenomena were extraordinary, wait until social TV hits your screens. And it is not as far away as you think – not only with the logical IPTV market, but also terrestrial TV. Social media fused with TV is …the future and the implication of reach that will touch billions not millions.

As Facebook revolutionized the way advertisers can niche-target their online demographics, social TV will profoundly change the ad agencies and marketing departments will offer their wares in the television realm. It’s called tCommerce and watch out – TV widgets and recommendation engines are not far away.

Neilsen ratings seem vague, less targetable and will likely become obsolete in TV 2.0. See http://agoramedia.co.uk/blog/?s=kastelein&x=0&y=0 for articles I have written on Convergent Media and Social TV.

Contest link

On March the second the prediction will be pitched in front of a crowd of 200 Deloitte thought-leaders, CEOs, presidents and other VIPs in the Dutch TMT sector. The winner will be selected by the crowd.

This will be great exposure and certainly the platform to show our outlook and opportunities in these sectors.

We will keep you up to date!

In the previous post on our CMSP technology, I explained shortly what the system is, what it can do and why it’s time for this kind of technology which creates new cross media digital experiences.
The CMSP will bring people Entertainment 2.0 !

This post will be about the functionalities which were available in the previous platform based upon the CMSP technology.

From then, technology has evolved, one of our partners is able to transform calls into tweets or text which then will be inserted next to the avatar.
As you can see, the marketing opportunities from an advertiser/exploiter point of view are vast, think of “in-game” advertising, product placements, memberships and so on.

We are looking for early stage investors/angel to revive and redevelop this platform to the needs of current markets.
If you’re interested, have tips or potential leads, do let us know, we can provide an executive summary and business plan upon request.

Below you’ll find a screenshot with the highlights of the technology as it was deployed for that particular network. Click for full screenshot.

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We are looking to take Social Gaming to TV via Social TV platform – think Mafia Wars, Farm Town, and even Second Life on TV.
We have developed and successfully broadcast Social TV in Europe bypassing the remote using telephony 2.0 (mobile and landline), advanced IVR and business logic servers, realtime 3D along with web integration.

We need partners. We need financial backing to redevelop the project.

… where viewers can create a virtual character, pilot it in the TV environment, meet, compete, play and even talk to other viewers/competitors via phone.

What is the Cross Media Social Platform (CMSP)?

The TV market is ‘on the move’ – competition is growing and digital channels via ISP’s and IPTV providers are now crashing through what was once the walled fortress of broadcast television. Interactive content and social media are the buzz and broadcasters are looking for both innovation and revenue generation models that fall outside of the traditional advertising box of the past. And the need for all types of content is growing exponentially, of which one is created by users themselves.

The Cross Media Social Platform is a unique product that not only offers a business model that encompasses current and widely spread advertising revenue – it also has added value by offering broadcasters the opportunity to earn money via telephony (Premium Rate Numbers and Premium SMS) via freemium modelling, as well as web and phone subscription models – where users can augment their profiles and characters on the web for TV and the web.

We created an interactive, virtual world on both television and the Internet that envelops social networking, community, user generated content, competition, and entertainment. And we are interested in developing this further with principles who were involved in the previous project. And it works on both standard broadcast or terrestrial TV as well as IPTV, Satellite, Cable etc.

See video of work we did in the past at Youtube

Visuals of the Cross Media Social Platform (CMSP)

Below you will find a basic CMSP architecture demo and a couple of screenshots.

It evens goes further, technology developments are evolving, partners have released an API enabling developers to create unified communications (telephone, cellular text message, instant message (Jabber, AIM, Yahoo, MSN) applications using traditional document-based web development flow. This sort of technology can be implemented in the Cross Media Social Platform, adapting to the needs and ways of nowadays communication.

Why Agora Media?

We have the experience and know-how, without having to invent the wheel and exploit this competitive advantage, we can respond very fast and accurate to the concretizing needs of the Social TV/Social Media/converging Media community and industry! We have a vast network of 2.0, cross media and technology pioneers, working closely with them to stay on top of trends and developments which will enhance the Cross Media Social Platform.

Why now?

The interest in Social TV is rising, the television landscape is changing, permanently. Media consumption is converging and increasingly socializing. More and more experiments, products and services are initiated and developed to meet these changes. Being on top of these trends and offering new digital cross media experiences to your target audiences and putting you permanently on the map!

Feel free to contact us if interested or wish to receive more information.

by Richard Kastelein (originally published at Atlantic Free Press)

Whilst the mainstream media players are quietly pushing their technology and innovation teams to the maximum across the world in a race to marry Social Media and TV, most of the public remains oblivious and left out of the loop, mainly due to offerings being in Proof of Concept (POC) stage or not even… and still on the chalkboard.
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An interesting perspective in this article by the ScienceDaily.
The perspective is derived from:

In the past, watching TV was a social activity that brought people together. The whole family watched the same program on the same TV set, and when people went to work the next day they could be fairly sure that most other people had also seen the same program. This is no longer the case. What once brought us together is now a source of fragmentation. Most families have several TVs, and they sit in different rooms and view different programs — if they watch TV at all. What’s more, the channel offerings have become so large and varied that few programs qualify as shared topics in the lunchroom at work.

From a conservative and traditional point of view, where Family was a true cornerstone of the society, this would absolutely be valid.
In the increasing individualistic society, where global is the new local, where modularity of daily life decides what activities to perform, Family as a starting point is not the most valid one to analyse if the social aspect of TV viewing is dissapearing.
I believe that it’s not dissapearing, but there’s a shift in the type of people with whom is being socialized during watching TV or any other digital activity. I add this explicitely, because digital activities are activities which were not diffused or even available a decade ago. The enabler is technological and the further increase of socializing the television activity will become clear the coming three years.
Not Family, but complete strangers, digital friends are becoming the new Family when it comes to many daily activities. Modularity is also partially causing this, which drives people to tune in with other people with the same need at that point of time, qualitatively increasing the spent time due to the aligned interest.

Social TV is in its infancy, systems do already exist which enable the Social TV experience. The fact that the technology exists, does not mean people will adapt or change their habbits. Perceived risks are too high for older generations, to change from a passive activity to a more interactive digital activity. Generation Z will organically adapt these new activities and socialize with their new digital Families.

In what ways do you think the technology will change the socializing aspect in comparison with the pre-digital era?

That is what Chitter.tv is offering people. Right now it’s in beta, but you can sign in with your Twitter account.
Watching TV becomes interactive, from a passive modus, you are now able to interact in real-time with other watchers who happen to consume the same content at that time.

Right now TV and Twitter are two major activities, TV is being consumed more and more in combination with other activities like Internet, radio and so on. Combining these two is bound to trigger interest from users, companies and the market in understanding the converging phenomenon and how users will intertwine the two.
At this point, some of the channels which can be watched on Chitter.tv are: MTV, Fox News, Sky News, Bloomberg, but also channels like Classic.fm TV, RaiNews, RTL-Z, Humor-TV and AT5.
Depending on your interest it certainly has its charms to engage with current watchers and talk about the live seen content, it feels odd, but that has to grow on you.

This is just a beta version, but many features can be thought up which will add value and experience to Chitter.tv, probably initial experiences and opinions are awaited till further development is undertaken.
It’s not possible to scroll down the list of tweets or directly interact with another user. From a commercial point of view all kinds of interactive commerce can be implemented to convert impulses and enthausiasts.

Interesting to see where this will head to, the perceived risk is low, so many will at least test this, how many will experience this as a added-value service and convergence?
What’s your opinion?

This is great news for the industry, a technology and platform that services online media content to a large amount of devices from any manufacturer.
Another step towards media and device convergence!

Press release taken from the DivX website:

DivX Launches New Internet TV Platform to Redefine the Future of Entertainment
DivX TV(TM) Receives Widespread Support from Consumer Electronics Companies and Content Providers

LAS VEGAS, Jan 06, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX News Network/ — DivX, Inc. (Nasdaq: DIVX), a leading digital media company, today announced the launch of DivX TV(TM), a comprehensive embedded Internet TV platform that provides access to a diverse line-up of online media content streamed directly to any connected device from any manufacturer.

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Informitv – a convergent communications consultancy agency – is one of our regularly read websites, an authority when it comes to television and its convergence. Their publication Connected Vision is well worth the read as well, which you can download here.

Dr William Cooper of Informitv has given 20 predictions for the next decade on television and its developments:
(Visit their website to read the additional information per prediction)

1. Television will be less dominant.
2. Fewer television channels will survive.
3. Global communities will dominate media.
4. Audiovisual communication will become personal.
5. Most viewing will be on personal screens. .
6. Mobile video will be delivered over data networks.
7. Displays will be network connected.
8. Displays will become resolution independent.
9. High definition will be standard.
10. Fidelity of reproduction will improve.
11. 3D will be a limited success.
12. Network distribution will become more efficient.
13. Fibre-optic networks will reach the home.
14. Broadband will become a utility.
15. Home networks will become ubiquitous.
16. Massive data storage will be cheap as chips.
17. Physical media distribution will decline.
18. Global releases will reduce piracy.
19. Copyright protection will be invisible.
20. People will pay to avoid adverts.

When reading through the 20 points, an apprehension is becoming clear that this industry is at the dawn of thorough transformation, melting with other media into a morphed new industry that has much more opportunities for that what it sustains: Content.
Summarized can be said that important developments are the fact that every screen can be used to consume content (whatever screen works to service what a user wants, when he wants it and where he wants it), television -as we know it- will decrease in importancy and hardware/underlaying technologies will advance the ‘front-end’ developments.

An exciting decade is awaiting us full of media convergence and evolutions. What are your most important conclusions or predictions?