August 6, 2008

Integra5 Unveils MediaFriends TV Chat

Integra5, the leader in ‘blending the bundle’ into new communications experiences that span multiple consumer devices, today announced the expansion of its i5 Converged Services Platform (i5 CSP) with MediaFriends™, a suite of social media applications that blend powerful real-time communications and community features across TVs, PCs and mobile phones. The initial application, MediaFriends TV Chat – which will be showcased for the first time next week at the CableLabs Summer Conference – allows users to invite members of online buddy lists to join a group chat on TV and participate in the live discussion via SMS text messages sent from their mobile devices.

As evidenced by shows such as “American Idol,” “Lost” and “24,” TV programming is driving the rapid proliferation of dedicated affinity groups and communities. Viewers are leveraging the emergence of social media applications – such as fan Web sites, blogs and wikis – and SMS text messaging to socialize around TV programming in an ad-hoc manner, using a combination of devices, including PCs and mobile phones. For example, AT&T research revealed that this season’s “American Idol” viewers cast a record 78 million votes via text messaging, and 22% of respondents in an AT&T poll reported learning to text in order to vote for a contestant. In addition, a recent report from new media research firm, Grunwald Associates, found that 45% of teenagers have sent instant messages or e-mail to others watching the same TV show.

MediaFriends TV Chat taps the exploding growth of social communities centered around TV content – providing a real-time, shared TV viewing experience, and enhancing and simplifying it by intelligently leveraging the TV for viewing and participating in the group chat, the mobile device for the ease and familiarity of texting, and the PC for buddy list management.

With MediaFriends TV Chat, users are able to set up and manage buddy lists on their PC, which they can then access on TV. Using their remote control, they can invite individuals or groups to watch TV programming together. Buddies can accept or decline the invitation; if they accept, their TV automatically tunes to that channel, and a live group chat is visible on the screen. Viewers can then participate in the group chat by sending text messages via their mobile phone to the phone number displayed on the chat banner.

“As consumers embrace an increasingly digital lifestyle, their behaviors reflect a desire to communicate in new ways that blur traditional service and device boundaries. MediaFriends TV Chat is a natural extension of i5’s leadership in blending new communications experiences across all user devices,” said Meredith Flynn-Ripley, CEO of Integra5. “Our i5 CSP, which embraces the open Web with a standards-based architecture, enables operators to consistently meet subscribers’ rapidly changing media consumption behavior – quickly and easily layering on new communications applications across TVs, PCs, and mobile and landline phones with no new equipment or software required within the home.”

Proven to boost revenues and retention, the open standards- and network-based i5 CSP enables operators to rapidly and continuously deploy real-time converged services across TVs, PCs, and mobile and landline phones. The platform – chosen by more than 30 service providers worldwide – scales to millions of subscribers and requires no truck rolls or in-home equipment. It works in cable, IPTV, and hybrid video and telephony networks and supports technology architectures, including IMS, tru2way and EBIF. The flexibility of the platform also allows operators to embed advanced subscriber-managed features, such as personalization (photos and nicknames), active call control and i-Click™ (click-to-call) into any application.

i5’s MediaFriends TV Chat is scheduled for availability in early 2009. Future MediaFriends applications will incorporate additional social media capabilities, such as: TV Chat invitations that reach PCs and mobile phones; advanced personalization features; presence, so that users can see who is watching a TV program; and integration with social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace and others.



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