Telebuddies: Social Stitching with Interactive Television

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.