Telebuddies: social stitching with interactive television

Luyten, Kris; Thys, Kristof; Huypens, Steven; Coninx, Karin

doi:10.1145/1125451.1125651

Kris Luyten, Kristof Thys, Steven Huypens, & Karin Coninx, Telebuddies: social stitching with interactive television, in Gary M. Olson & Robin Jeffries (eds.), Extended Abstracts Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada, April 22-27, 2006,1049-1054 (ACM 2006). DOI PDF

Abstract:

In this paper we report on our work to enable "laid-back" social interactions using television as a primary interaction medium. By integrating semantic web techniques with interactive television we were able to create smart applications that can run as extensions of television shows and stimulate groups of users to communicate. Groups are based on the shared characteristics that can be found for subsets of spectators. Communication between spectators is brought about at two levels: direct communication like instant messaging and indirect communication like cooperating in a team to win a quiz. Our system does not necessarily require a new television format, but is able to reuse existing television shows and to "socialize" them so they can be re-broadcasted with support for group interaction.