As we move towards the Networked Society, technology-savvy products are being combined with products from other industries to form cross-industry solutions to everyday problems. This has been demonstrated with IKEA’s new Uppleva (“experience”) solution, recently launched in Europe and scheduled for a US launch next year. With Uppleva, multimedia technology and furniture are combined in a way that ensures the product looks good both when it’s on and when it’s off. Cross-industry collaborations like this one are becoming increasingly important.

Today, creating a multimedia experience in your own home is often quite complex. Basically, you either need to be a genius or you have to get support from one to put it all together, even if you’ve bought all the components from the same store. The installation and service activation is the easiest part, the lifecycle management of the solution the more cumbersome part. After a long day at work, who wants to take on this 24/7 role to keep their family connected? Pre-integrated solutions based on well-conceived platforms can simplify our lives a lot.

You can no longer wow your neighbor simply by buying an HD-quality flat TV. We now take it for granted that TVs come in almost any size we want, and at an affordable price. BluRay players and 7+1 and 5+1 audio systems are amplifying the experience of today’s TV viewers. So are wireless access to subwoofers and loudspeakers, and today’s advanced storage and streaming solutions– not to mention the growing number of HD-capable recording devices. All of these additions serve the individual in the Networked Society as we become both producers and consumers of a new kind of home entertainment.

In the future, I expect to see the following trends:

• cross-industry innovation across historical industry borderlines will be the norm in the Networked Society
• large digital screens will continue to play a key role in delivering our multimedia experience, although we have reached the point where simply expanding the size of the TV is no longer enough
• manufacturers of full custom solutions and best-of-brand approaches are encountering competition from the makers of flexible holistic-solution offerings, in which the technology features are complemented with design, ease of use and life cycle management as key buying criteria.

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The TV Check service is a social TV application for smartphones. The user simply points the phone at the TV screen and the service recognizes the program that is on  TV.

As soon as the program is identified, the user is able to tell their Facebook friends about the program. If you watch the same program often, you might become the ‘master’ of that program or channel (similar to being a Foursquare mayor).

The idea is to create a social TV experience in the same way people have social Tv experiences when they talk about TV at the coffee machine. Users can connect with people who like the same type of programs through Facebook and get TV recommendations from their friends.

Many speakers at the Forum believed that consumers will become increasingly challenged to find and identify content with the increased selection of on-demand video services and a tsunami of content to choose from. Social recommendations together with smart search services were believed to be the way forward.

The TV Check service competes with existing internet services such as GetGlue
But Guillaume Lacroix from Orange said during a panel discussion “that there is no reason why operators can’t do what internet companies do.”

Orange will launch TV Check in France first and then later in other countries. The service will be open for all consumers regardless what mobile carrier they have.

Orange also acquired 49 percent stake in Dailymotion earlier this year and they just recently announced that they acquires a 34 percent minority interest in Skyrock’s web operations.

The post Operators take on Social TV at the Monaco Media Forum appeared first on The Networked Society Blog.

Just last week, Hulu announced the launch a Facebook app that enables ‘frictionless’ sharing – if you authorize sharing on the app, you can watch your favorite TV show directly on the Facebook platform in real-time. Your friends can see it and watch it too, chatting with you while they watch.

What’s more, production studio VIMBY (Video in My BackYard) and online distributor KoldCast TV announced a few days ago that they have joined forces with internet innovator Chris Wyatt to launch the first social TV network in the US – Youtoo TV.

So it seems that social TV systems that integrate voice communication, text chat, presence and context awareness, TV recommendations, ratings, or video conferencing with TV content – are opening up for a whole new level of interaction for TV viewers.

But how will Social TV work? The consumer needs to be in the center. They want content when and where they want it, on any platform – it’s not going to be just on the TV set. This is very different from the traditional way things work in the media industry, with planned broadcasts. How the industry will change to accommodate the needs of users in the era of Social TV is still to be determined.

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