Google launches YouTube viewing parties on Google+ Hangouts. The Ikea TV Is Coming — and We Should All Take It Seriously | Gadget Lab. Ikea is entering the TV space with its Uppleva system, debuting in Europe later this month. Ikea was your go-to retailer when you needed to furnish your dorm room — and many of us certainly have Ikea staples still littering our homes. Ikea media centers and bookshelves have long housed our electronics, but starting this summer, Ikea will become a full-fledged electronics manufacturer competing with Samsung and Sony. The company’s TV system, Uppleva, was first revealed in mid-April amid a wave of surprise, ridicule and WTF. “An Ikea TV? The upcoming Uppleva is a Wi-Fi-ready smart TV.
Indeed, one of the touted benefits of Uppleva is the fact that all those wires and cables are completely hidden from view. “The idea is to sell complete TV solutions, where TV, sound and furniture are combined and integrated in a way that is really unique to the market today,” Uppleva project leader Marcel Godfroy says in Ikea’s latest product video. Indeed. “It’s Ikea. Home Screen: Will Apple's 'iTV' Make Our Living Rooms More Social Again? Hulu increases size of Web video player by 55 percent, improves Face Match. BBC developing iTunes clone to sell television programming. Apple’s rumored iTV ‘the biggest thing since the smartphone,’ says analyst. Super Bowl Breaks Social TV and Broadcast Records. Super Bowl XLVI was not only a big hit with broadcast viewers, it also excelled in the social TV space. Hollywood news site Deadline reports that 111.3 million Americans tuned in to watch the New York Giants defeat the New England Patriots.
That puts Super Bowl XLVI just ahead of last year's record breaking broadcast, making the 2012 Super Bowl the most-watched U.S. TV broadcast ever. Of course, the Super Bowl didn't just do well in TV ratings. It dominated the social conversations on Twitter, Facebook and social checkin services like GetGlue. According to social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs, Super Bowl XLVI was the biggest social TV event on record, surpassing the 2011 MTV VMAs in terms of social media comments. Bluefin's data shows that the Super Bowl generated 12.2 million social media comments, up 600% from 2011's 1.8 million comments. Halftime Show Soars Although the game itself generated tons of social comments, the halftime show was also hugely social.
The Ads. How Two 'Cave' Men Brought Major League Baseball Into the Social Media Age. The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, a relentless digital marketing agency focused on search, social, and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Learn how to track your social media conversions with our new technology, ROSI trax™. Watch the demo. When it comes to capturing the attention of young people, baseball suffers from the same problem that plagues all forms of entertainment — infinite competition.
"You used to go outside and play sports, which put you on that path," says Terry Lefton, editor-at-large for Sports Business Journal and Sports Business Daily. "Now there are more things to do. My 14-year-old plays video games constantly. I'll be watching NFL with him, and if the game gets boring, he'll go upstairs and play Madden. To such young people, a three-hour baseball game may seem agonizingly slow and dull. Ten months on, MLB and even skeptics like Lefton think the effort has been successful, even though evidential data is hard to come by. How Social Media & Social TV Will Change Super Bowl 2012. This year’s Super Bowl will be more social than ever before. With the rise of social TV and the first-ever 2,800-square-foot social media command center, fans who have trekked down to Indianapolis and people at Super Bowl parties across the country can now opt to have a super-connected experience.
This marks the first time that the NFL has partnered with a Super Bowl host city. Like a Midwestern truck stop that has a restaurant, convenience store, bathrooms, random coin-operated claw games (that you can’t ever win) and gas, the Super Bowl social media command center seeks to be all things to all football fans. Receive mobile updates about navigating the city. The Super Bowl Social Media Command center will answer your Twitter (@superbowl2012) and Facebook questions.
Tons of fans are already busy on social media. Various social TV apps are already available for Facebook. The Super Bowl seems to be making up for the lack of social media at the London 2012 Olympics. Nuance Announces Voice-Controlled Dragon TV. This CES Video is presented by Wendy's, where $1 gets you more.
Show what you can do with $1 on Facebook during the Wendy's Value Challenge! No purchase necessary. Enter by 1/22/12. To enter and for Official Rules, visit www.facebook.com/wendys. Nuance debuted at CES 2012 this week a platform for TV that understands voice and natural language. The product, called Dragon TV, also features voice search and social sharing, so you can ask your TV, "When is Dexter on? " “Dragon TV brings an amazing voice experience directly to the living room, similar to what people do every day on their phones and in their cars,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile.
Dragon TV is available now. See Also: The hottest stories from the floor of CES 2012! Series presented by Wendy's. Lenovo K91 brings Android 4.0 to the world's most advanced 55-inch TV. Lenovo's K91 is not your normal 55-inch television. To start with, its two most notable features are its operating system and central processor: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running on Qualcomm's 1.5GHz dual-core 8060 Snapdragon CPU. The TV can be controlled with your voice using natural language processing and recognition, and even includes video interaction (with facial recognition) thanks to a 5 megapixel webcam that's integrated into the bezel. Otherwise, the K91 remote control is up to the task thanks to a touchpad, 5-way d-pad, and motion sensor. The display is no slouch either incorporating 3D FPR technology into a "flicker-free," LED backlit, full HD IPS panel with 240Hz refresh.
The user experience starts with Lenovo's "Sandwich" UI that unites traditional TV and VoD features with custom-built apps. Lenovo K91 Smart TV gallery Previous Next View full Gallery Related Items K91 Smart TV (55-inch) Is There A Future For Social TV? People today are sharing to social networks while they’re watching TV. They’re communicating with friends in real time (chatting, IM, tweeting) and asynchronously (commenting and posting).
A new report from Ooyala predicts that these social elements will become a part of the content itself, appearing inside video players, in apps or on second screens such as tablets or smartphones. This vision for the future of social TV focuses mostly on sharing and discovering while watching. How does this vision differ for viewers and publishers? Social TV is about sharing. In the land of social TV sharing, people are communicating with friends in real-time (chatting, IM, tweeting) while they comment on the content they’re watching. With the new YouTube re-design and the idea that YouTube may produce its own content, video and social just got one step closer to each other. Social TV is about discovery. For publishers, the idea of social TV is stellar. Logitech drops Google TV, leaving Apple TV as dominant player.
Logitech Chief Executive Guerrino De Luca says his company's dance with Google TV was a "big mistake" and says it will stop producing the set top box. The Verge website quotes De Luca as saying the introduction of the Logitech Revue with Google TV "cost us dearly" and when supplies are sold out, that will be it for the ill-fated venture.
It is estimated that Logitech spent about US$100 million on the product and has little to show for it. While some other companies, notably Sony, are still selling Google TV boxes, the little Apple TV is still in stores and apparently satisfying buyers, even if it hasn't been a blockbuster hit either. The second-generation Apple TV, announced in September of 2010, has experienced much better sales success than the original model. The reason? Now rumors are flying that Apple will produce a complete TV solution, and quotes in the recent Steve Jobs biography have added to the speculation that something might be on the way. [via The Verge] The Future of Social TV. Occupy Wall Street Ads Hit TV This Weekend. Occupy Wall Street could be occupying your television this weekend. Supporters chipped in more than $6,000 to a crowdfunding campaign that will put a video of protesters explaining their objectives in the commercial lineup of cable television channels.
"It's sort of an occupied version of advertising," crowdfunding site Loudsauce's co-founder Colin Mutchler says. "It's about occupying ad space with what citizens think is important for the country. " The video was produced free by David Sauvage, who uploaded it to YouTube October 12. The Loudsauce campaign to put it on television started the same day. Loudsauce works much like Kickstarter, but it crowdfunds media space purchases rather than projects. Since launching late last year, it has helped place ads from organizations such as environmental campaigns 350.org and The Story of Stuff. Sauvage's Occupy Wall Street commercial is an example of how this perception isn't always true.
Is Facebook the way to go for new web originals? — Online Video News. Social TV Just Got Real With Hulu On Facebook. Hulu does TV shows better than just about everyone. In fact, other than YouTube, Hulu attracts the highest level of engagement of any web video platform (with the average web viewer watching an average of 3.2 hours a month). That being said, Hulu has never done social particularly well. Sure, users interact on Hulu discussion boards, tweet clips to friends, and share shows on Facebook, but the platform has long been in need of a better way to find and share TV shows and movies. So, today at F8, Hulu announced the launch of a brand new Facebook app, which endeavors to make the Hulu experience social. The videos you watch on Hulu are automatically shared with friends (approval is needed, thankfully). The coolest part? And for those zealous Hulu Plussers out there, you will be happy to know that the new Facebook app will give you access to your entire H+ library on Facebook, and discuss, comment and share in the same way the unwashed regular Hulu subscribers do.
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