There has been an ongoing debate on the extent to which consumers desire (or will accept) social networking on connected TVs. Strategy Analytics recently undertook a series of UX research sessions with consumers of digital media and we probed in depth whether participants would want to integrate social networking functions into their digital media experience. Their responses suggest that the notion of social networking incorporates several related, but distinct concepts, and individuals’ perceptions of social networking include these concepts to varying degrees. The principle concepts related to social networking according to these participants are:

• Messaging
• Sharing Pictures and Videos
• Gaming
• Recommendations
• Finding Old Friends/Colleagues

Not all of these functions are considered particularly appropriate to be accessed via a connected TV, and a user’s attitudes towards incorporating ‘social networking’ into the TV experience depend on the extent to which they equate social networking with each of the above functions. Broadly, consumers consider viewing pictures/videos and recommendation aspects of social networking to be appropriate functions to incorporate, however person-to-person messaging is generally considered less appropriate – usually due to concerns over privacy. These participants generally felt that social gaming aspects of social networking are not a very good fit with connected TV, because most generally prefer to play such games on personal devices (e.g. PC, smartphone) while watching video content on their TV at the same time. When they think of gaming on the TV screen, they expect a superior gaming experience similar to a dedicated gaming console. Notifications of messages (social networking or indeed even emails/text messages) on the TV screen are appealing to some consumers, although they would generally prefer to access these messages via a personal device. Our report on consumer preferences from digital media devices - including UX benchmarks of Google TV, Apple TV, Boxee, and Roku - will be available to subscribers of our Digital Home Observatory later this week.