OTT-TV social services over IPTV networks Eyal Haberman

Abstract With the increasing amount of video content available online, the future of television is increasingly moving towards the Internet. There are two distribution methods that are commonly used across today's Internet - Over-the-Top Television (OTT-TV) and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). With the already existing, widely deployed and heavily invested IPTV networks, operators are looking to increase their offering, revenues and customer retention in trying to catch up the trend of viewing video content over the internet using mobile devices. Introduction The Internet now has a global reach and so has become a suitable medium for distributing multimedia content, with video usage predicted to grow exponentially over the next few years. According to recent researches, video in its various forms (TV, video on demand and Internet) will account for over 91% of worldwide consumer Internet traffic in 2014, with mobile devices generating 6.3 Exabyte's of traffic every month by 2015, of which around two thirds will be video. As OTT-TV uses the existing network and doesn’t require any special provisioning, content can easily be delivered to any device, anywhere at any time. IPTV providers would be able to offer their service across a wider and more diverse range of devices (and audience) while reducing the complexity of the delivery infrastructure. This may open up the system to the possibility of increasing revenues from streams such as advertising and customer profiling. New social TV services The term, or actually the concept of Social TV, refers to the simultaneous use of social media tools and applications while watching TV. Social TV has the promise of making TV interactive and social, like it was when a family sat together around the living room TV and will offer an increased interactivity around shared programming both live and recorded. Many people use their tablet or Smartphone while watching TV, which opens new opportunities. Some of the new services of social TV are listed below:

- Double or triple screening – simultaneous use of tablet or Smartphone while watching TV.

- Co-viewing: update your friends about what you are watching now and where, and allow them to join viewing the same channels, while on different locations.

- Communicating and chatting with friends while watching the same program - Sharing family, friends and other users with your favorites and history watch list - Adding user's recommendation about viewed content which can also be shared

between different users - Social based recommendation –system based recommendation based on users most

liked channels/programs, other similar programs, links to new episodes, etc. - Back channeling - enhancements of the shared experience of live events like

American Idol or sport contests by enabling the user to input real time feedback to the studio, input their voting and answers to quiz shows

- Second-screen experiences to accompany TV shows - allows TV viewers to host their own second-screen content for sharing songs, quotes and other useful information associated with a particular program which can be viewed by other users.

- Follow me – pause playing on one device and continue from the same point on the companion devices

- Personalization – allows the user's settings, favorites, wish lists, preferences, previous purchases and user defined content to be maintained on all devices. It also enables the service providers to offer particular content for specific devices.

- Click-to-buy - Enables quick and easy on line shopping for buying stuff seen on TV, via special tags about items on the screen.

Summary It is clear that Social TV has a lot of benefits for service providers and content owners: it drives the level of engagement up, increases ratings, and can also help increase revenues via advertising. For the consumer, on the other hand, not only they get a backchannel, but they can also have a very immersive and interactive TV experience as they can use their mobile devices for watching their favorite TV shows, comment and talk to their friends (and so much more) while still watching TV. It is fascinating to look for the future to see how popular will social TV be.