ITV joins Bebo’s ‘open media’ platform and possible implications for telecommunications

Yesterday Bebo announced that ITV is to join the ‘open media’ platform “giving free and open access to premium TV content to Bebo’s community of 40 million users worldwide”.  ITV will have a ‘member profile’ on Bebo that will host multiple channels, each promoting individual programs.  Bebo users could then choose to become ‘fans’ of programs and be notified when new content is uploaded to the ITV profile.

Users will be able to integrate video content into their own profiles. Interactivity elements include teaser clips, interviews, blogs, forums, galleries, a wall for users to post comments.

Imagine the possibilities:

• highly popular individual users (those with many ‘fans’) developing their own channels based on open media content?
• viral distribution/marketing?

Media companies can use their own video players which can carry their own advertising. Bebo gets to facilitate value-added experiences to their customers, increasing the likelihood of network extension and member-retention.

Somewhat ironically, I was reading about this idea in a Telco 2.0 posting this morning that questioned the sustainability of telcos morphing into media companies. In fact, Telco 2.0 stated that “Someone who isn’t a telco will have a smash-hit way of blending video, interactivity and social networking”. Rather than become a media business, Telco 2.0 say that the role of the telco is to become a logistics solution provider.

Key trends

For me, the Bebo/ITV announcement is another indicator of the symbiosis between traditional media and social media; it marks another important milestone in the migration from closed to open content distribution, and the use of social networks as a hub for entertainment and connectivity.

What’s old and what’s new in social network services

When thinking about social network services (SNS), what do most people have in mind? MySpace, Facebook and Bebo may well come quickly to mind. What is it that SNS do? What probably comes to mind are activities like sharing a personal profile, posting photos, videos, and music, writing about shared interests, organising social activities (like parties!). Some may reflect back on several years of blogging, where knowledge is shared and created through online collaboration. I’ve heard about 15 year-olds in Melbourne, Australia swapping their social network address first, mobile phone number second.

The growth in SNS has been rapid and global.  According to ComScore ’hundreds of millions of people around the world are visiting social network sites each month and many are doing so on a daily basis”.

That’s a very potted history of SNS use. So what’s emerging? Quite a lot actually. Here some examples:

• Loomia lets readers of online media (who are also Facebook users) see a list of recommended news articles referred by their Facebook ‘friends’.
• eFans is a social network for sports fans (combining a sports portal and social network).
• MySpace and the BBC have annouced a partnership  to enable MySpace users to share some of the BBC’s programs by embedded them into their personalised profile pages. Imagine the potenial for viral distribution through network effects…and if a ‘big hit’ occurred…what that would do hasten the shift from mainstream to online TV.
• MySpace as well as Facebook have opened up their sites to third-party developers…adding fuel to the pace of innovation.
• Bebo has partnered with UK and USA broadcasters to provide professional media companies and individual users the opportunitiy to create and upload their own content, and monetise content through serving and selling their own advertising.
• Professionals have started using LinkedIn as their sole contacts repository.

Common threads here are the SNS’s are shaping up to be integrated hubs for individuals and their extended networks to connect, communicate and to access and share tailored news, information and entertainment.  Advertising is moving online to SNS as well as search.  Mainstream media is moving online via SNS - not migrating so much as complementing traditional broadcast services.

What may well lie on the horizon? I would suggest embedded voice, video as well as text, IM and chat; communication between virtual and real identities.

Seems to me that social network services are shaping up to be drivers of innovation and substitute/preferred services for social and entertainment needs – and business knows it!