UK-based social TV app Zeebox is rebranding itself as Beamly, as part of its efforts to show it's a mainstream product rather than just a Twitter-savvy TV guide for geeks.
The company – which launched in 2011 and now has 2m monthly active users – is relaunching its website and iOS and Android apps today with the new branding, as well as features that aim to get people logging in throughout the day to chat about their favourite shows.
"We had a dream which was to create participation TV: instead of just sitting and watching, you would interact with the show. But to build that, we needed a TV guide so you could find shows and sort the guide by what was popular and buzzing," co-founder and chief technology officer Anthony Rose told The Guardian ahead of the relaunch.
"One day we realised that people perceived Zeebox as a new type of TV guide rather than a co-viewing experience. So in the last six months we've set about transitioning from model one, which was essentially that synchronised Twitter playalong experience, to a fully fledged social network for television."
The new app encourages people to "follow" individual TV shows, celebrities and other Beamly users, before serving them up a feed of activity and show recommendations – although the existing TV guide is still part of the app too. Shows will have their own "TV rooms" within the app where fans can chat throughout the day, and interact live with games, polls and other features when they're on air.
The relaunch is also an attempt to respond to shifting TV habits, as people watch more shows on-demand, including from providers like Netflix as well as traditional broadcasters. "What we've realised is that it's about the TV show. People watch House of Cards, Homeland, Breaking Bad and so on, but they choose where and when they watch," said Rose.
"We've morphed our original proposition into something where you can now snack at any time of day: in the morning, you might open the app and get news and gossip on your favourite shows or actors, chat about the last episode, and start planning your evening's viewing. Then in the evening, it might be a synchronous experience."
Rose added that Beamly is well aware of the danger of spoilers for viewers who are a little way behind others in a popular series. "For the next season of House of Cards, for example, we will have a TV room for each episode, and you'll be able to mark the ones you've watched," he said, comparing this to the way people might interact with this kind of show on Twitter: "it's very coarse-grained: just hashtag HouseOfCards."
Zeebox has been adding more features to draw users back regularly over the last two years: Rose said that as people gained the ability to follow shows, they came back twice as often, and that once they could follow people, they came back 10 times as often. He also said that this has changed the kind of people using the app.
"As we made these changes, the audience demographic for Zeebox began shifting. When we launched, it was a very male geeky audience, all about remote-controlling and remote-recording and the TV guide: plain utility," he said.
"We still have that loyal following, but as we started putting in the community features, that aligned with the Pinterest audience: female and younger-skewing. Thanks to those social features we've added, in the US 62% of our users are now aged 16-24 and female. It's really resonated with people who want to talk about TV shows."
If Beamly can continue to be more mainstream, that's a good thing for the company and its business model, which revolves around TV producers and broadcasters using the app to provide extra interactivity around shows, as well as make money from shopping and advertising. The company also provides analytics on how people are interacting with specific shows, and a Shazam-style "SpotSynch" to help its app identify and "click-enable" individual TV ads.
"There is a significant second-screen advertising opportunity: our US partners are selling $100k-plus TV ad campaigns that come with the second screen synchronised ad in Zeebox. You might be watching the ad for a car on TV, and can now click in the app, which uses your IP address to work out where you are and get a test drive," said Rose, who added that Beamly is working with broadcasters rather than against them – it wouldn't, for example, sell an in-app ad to Pepsi synchronised with a Coca-Cola ad on TV.
Shazam is the obvious comparison for Beamly in its current form, because that company has also been working hard on persuading people to use its app more often, with social features and extra interactivity around TV shows. With 86m monthly active users at the end of 2013, Shazam is also much bigger than Beamly, although Rose is clearly ready for the competition.
"Just open Shazam. It shows you 27 albums and tells you Pink Floyd is now the favourite. It has nothing to do with television! Run Beamly, and it will offer you shows to follow, show you a TV guide, and connect you with people watching The Voice. It doesn't tell you about your record collection," he said.
How about Twitter? It's making a big play for broadcasters and advertisers, with the latest evidence the keynote at this month's MIPTV conference by its chief media scientist Deb Roy, in which he pitched Twitter as "a force multiplier that can enhance the impact and possibilities of television... a synchronised social soundtrack for whatever is happening in the moment".
"Twitter has no TV guide, nothing that shows what's on tonight, nothing that acts as a remote control for your Sky box. You can just type in a hashtag," said Rose. "People read articles about companies wanting to get into the TV space, or second-screen or advertising, and have a perception they're all treading on each other's toes. It's easy to conflate them all, but as a consumer, they're all pretty different."
These are nevertheless the competitors that Beamly is targeting in 2014, even if its rivals from a couple of years ago – GetGlue, IntoNow and Viggle for example – are still also around in varying forms. None have truly set the TV world alight, it's fair to say, despite (or rather because of) the well-established pattern of people chatting about TV using more general social apps like Twitter and Facebook.
"The second screen has been in a slight malaise recently, that's the perception. Two years ago there was a large amount of hype where companies got funding, and have since been bought out," admits Rose.
"There's now a perception that the space is contracting, but actually it's precisely the opposite: it's the arrival of more mature applications, as well as the arrival of new types of streaming devices with the ability to overlay things on the TV. I don't think anyone's got it right yet, but it's maturing."
Source: Guardian
