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.

(Originally published at Atlantic Free Press)

by Richard G. Kastelein

If we all thought the Facebook and Twitter social media growth phenomena were extraordinary, wait until Social TV hits your screens.

And it’s not as far away as you think — not only with the logical IPTV market, but also terrestrial TV. I recently attended the International Broadcast Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, which bills itself as ’The content creation management delivery experience’. IBC2008 attracted 49,000+ visitors and 1,300+ exhibitors from more than 130 countries. This year is expected to be bigger. Last year, I was part of a team exhibiting at MIPTV in Cannes, and was expecting something a bit similar… but this was almost all about hardware and software and less about the actual formats and programs. However, this was not a disappointment. For embedded in the show there were some jewels… which have profoundly altered my view of Social Media, the future and the implication of reach that will touch billions not millions.
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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?

If you’re handy it was a piece of cake, but for most, connecting your PC or laptop with your TV, is a challenge.
The company Dutchtronics has introduced a solution (PConTV) to make it easier for people to experience the Web/computer on your TV and make advantage of the bigger TV screen.

The system comes along with a wireless keyboard which makes it easier and more importantly, uses the same control as the computer. This lowers the perceived risk and barriers for potential interested customers that are willing to give this convergent experience a try.

Taken from Spreekbuis.nl

What do you think of this innovation? Does it suit the needs of people and solves a usage dilemma?
Will these kind of devices be an intermediate step towards a fully Social TV and Television 2.0 experience or is this to suffice the needs of another segment in the market?

Another announcement last week, which I received with enthausiasm, was the approval of the Mobile DTV Standard by the ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee). The press release can be read here.

The Mobile DTV Standard are technical specifications which enable broadcasters to offer new services to mobile and other handheld devices making use of their digital television transmissions (DTV).

Indeed a milestone in the evolution and convergence of digital television. Broadcasters will have a wider range of devices to their disposal to offer existing -but more important- new services to their customers.

New business models arising from the Mobile DTV standard, will revolve around the evolution of Social TV and its convergence. The Mobile DTV Standard enables the possibility of interactive television services which will mix television, mobile and Internet to create new content services/applications and evolve transactional television to the next level. The Standard utilizes the Internet Protocol which increases the role of terrestial broadcasting even more.

The location characterstic of mobile devices, in combination with the increasing centralized role it plays and the mobility of the modern human will prelude a further democratization of television, where smaller/local broadcasters can take their chance to break through to wider audiences without the conventional television business model and its specifications.

As quoted from the press release:

“This milestone ushers in the new era of digital television broadcasting, giving local TV stations and networks new opportunities to reach viewers on the go,” said Paul Karpowicz, NAB Television Board Chairman and President of Meredith Broadcast Group. “This will introduce the power of local broadcasting to a new generation of viewers and provide all-important emergency alert, local news and other programming to consumers across the nation.”

It would be great if the Mobile DTV Standard will be incorporated in popular smartphones in the near future so that these early adopters have the chance to experience the next step in digital television and in this ‘role’ enhancing the applications to smoothen mass adoption.

by Richard Kastelein (originally posted on Atlantic Free Press)

It’s only been a couple of weeks since the European Broadcasting Union demonstrated the potential of the HbbTV specification at IBC2009 in Amsterdam. But it won’t be long before Europeans start seeing the results – before Christmas according to some pundits. And once compatible devices are out in the market, they say the speed-to-market of applications developed for the platform will be incredibly short… as the industry looks to new models that embrace open API’s and SDK’s much like Apple has done with the iPhone and the Open Source movement online with enormous projects such as Sourceforge. With an HTML environment activated by a simple red button, in the same manner as a Web portal, the resulting content can be delivered over the IP stream.
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