We speak to Anthony Rose, co-founder and CTO of UK firm Zeebox, which has developed a new app that providers users with a more social, interactive experience when watching live TV.

Whilst such promises are ten a penny in the interactive TV world, Zeebox is swiftly gaining attention for its polished interface, powerful "Zeetags" engine which generates clickable tags based on names, subjects and products mentioned during a TV show, and its combination of a number of useful features, including live chat with friends, an overview of social media activity around the programme, and access to additional information.

Despite launching less than four months ago to an increasingly crowded marketplace, its potential has already persuaded Sky to purchase a 10% stake in the company for over GB£ 10mn (US$ 15.6mn), securing for Sky the exclusive rights to integrate Zeebox technology into its own apps.

Zeebox is currently available in the UK for iOS devices as a downloadable app, and for PCs/Macs as an in-browser experience. Android versions are slated to launch later this year.

At present the app works with live TV only, although it will be enhanced to work with PVR and VOD content in the future, says Mr. Rose. Whereas many similar apps (and especially in the US) identify the programme being watched through audio "signatures" or content analysis, the Zeebox app takes a much simpler approach: it presents the user with an EPG of live television currently available, and when a programme is selected, it then presents a range of relevant information and social media streams.

If a user is watching on a Smart TV from Samsung, Sony, Panasonic or via a Virgin TiVo box, the app can auto-detect the programme being viewed and act as a remote control.

"What's interesting is that when we started, we thought that the audio sync was going to become very important, but it turns out that we've had precisely zero of our users ask for that sync functionality," said Mr. Rose. "I think that it is a very clever party trick, but I'm not sure that it's totally needed."

"We started [the Zeebox app] with live content for three reasons: firstly, millions of people watch live, second they are doing so at the same time, so you've got the social element around it, and three - live today is standardised, all TV channels come out the same, pretty much, whereas with VOD and PVR, it's a different technical challenge.

"What we've tried to do is take a 'good, better, best' approach, where it will work for someone with a regular TV, and if they have a connected TV then it will control it, and then it might eventually be built in to TVs, so that if you pull up the EPG on your TV, your friends will see what you are watching or maybe receive recommendations from you. But that last option is a slower burner, as it obviously needs integration with lots of devices, which is always a little slow."

What are the major advantages of adding social TV features to a television platform?

"The reality is that TV watching as we know it today is not the only way people can get entertainment: we see it in its current guise and think that this is the status quo forever more. But once upon a time people went to the cinema and that was a different entertainment model, and before that they told stories to each pother, and I think that what's happening is that as smartphones and tablets become pervasive, and the form factor enables people to sit with these devices on their laps, they are beginning to self-provide, and beginning to search for information about the actor on TV, and they are beginning to socialise more with their friends.

"So this is now an opportunity for the broadcaster and the device manufacturers to either engage with those audiences, or have the audience engage with more effort and more friction, but find a solution themselves. I think that as we move from a world of a relatively small number of channels to a world of unlimited content availability, you are going to rely on someone or something to guide you towards a set of programmes, and help you choose what to watch.

"People are beginning to self-provide their connected TV and social TV experiences, and so the advantages of providing something that is synchronised with the TV and that allows a broadcaster or device manufacturer to become part of that world, and which removes the friction for the consumer and makes it a greater experience, these will lead to further uptake for the consumer, and to the broadcaster being able to leverage this co-viewing experience instead of becoming alienated by it."

Where do you think social TV is headed in the next 12 months?

"I think it's going to explode, is the short answer - in a good way! If you look at the last 12 months, we started Zeebox in January 2010, and at that point there were very few companion TV experiences, you had to do quite a lot of research to find any of them, and suddenly there's another one every week now, and they are getting significant funding, significant attention, they are beginning to enter into other territories, and I think the zeitgeist is beginning to be there.

"When you were sat at your television previously, you never thought about tweeting or going on Facebook and interacting with people to discuss the show, and suddenly that is becoming something that you contemplate doing, and very soon that will become something that you do regularly, and in fact start feeling a little odd when you don't have the ability to do that in front of your TV any more.

"Now of course, one never kids oneself, this is always a process of starting with early adopters and then you go mainstream and so on, but I think what helps is the very low friction for anyone engaging with these apps, where you don't need to buy a big new TV, you simply install a free app on a device that you already have and log in.

"That incredibly low barrier to entry is going to lead I think to a very large number of people trying out this, and hopefully sticking with it."

Are companion devices such as smartphones and tablets the best way to interact with and control social TV features on the TV screen?

"I think that is a fascinating question, because many parties are all trying to "own the consumer", and I think that connected TV manufacturers have seen the rise of Smart TVs as a way to, instead of merely displaying other people's channels in a way that was blind to the TV itself, they perceive the opportunity to create editorial propositions delivered on the TV, be it apps, games, and editorial choices of content. So in that view, your TV becomes your smart hub, and your "choice-maker" or "taste-maker".

"Another worldview says that this is all far too difficult - people don't want to use Facebook on the TV, and there are multiple people in the family, each with their own social networks, and those TV remote controls are a very awkward way of navigating. So a completely different worldview is that the smartphone or tablet becomes the complete master control device, controlling not just the TV but also energy things throughout the house, and hi-fi systems etc.

"Thus the TV would become a high-resolution, beautiful but dumb video playback screen, and not only is the navigation done from a smartphone, but I think very importantly the choice of what you'll watch, the taste-maker, is determined by the smartphone or tablet and not the TV.

"In that model, it leads to the rise of the companion viewing experience, and maybe websites, that become the taste-maker, and if your companion viewing platform is not broadcast-oriented, it doesn't really matter whether when you click play, it is a live broadcast channel or a video-on-demand movie - you are choosing something that perhaps a friend is watching, and your TV now plays it, and where it came from and how it is delivered becomes completely irrelevant.

"I think that in that model, the tablet in your hand becomes a gateway to all sorts of entertainment, news and other experiences, and it leads to a world where the consumer doesn't really know or care how their content is delivered or where it comes from."

Do you think social recommendations are more powerful than content curation and automated recommendations?

"Again, that's a great question - I think that when you walk into a Chinese restaurant and they give you a menu of a hundred items, there is just too much to choose from, and you are looking for something to guide you to a small set of choices delivered neatly on a plate just for you.

"So the question is who might be choosing things for you, or what, and they fall into a few classes. There's the trusted authority, and that would typically be the BBC or the scheduler or some editorial person choosing things for you, there might be computerised recommendation systems, there might be the wisdom of the crowds, which is basically the most popular content, and finally there could be specific friends.

"I think that the answer is always going to be some combination of all of them. I think you always want a trusted authority, and I think it varies by genre quite a lot: so for example, when it comes to the news, when the BBC website or the Guardian publishes a story, they are not just reporting the news, they are actually defining it, so I think that people do look to a trusted authority, and without it, it really does feel like something is missing.

"The problem with the trusted authority though is that it is really recommending a small set of things to all people, and many of the things are not going to appeal to everyone. But I think you can't readily lose the trusted authority completely, people will keep turning to it.

"On the flip side, your social graph is brilliant at recommending things, but it can also be incredibly noisy, as we will increasingly see from the Facebook ticker, where today I see people listening to so many different things on Spotify, you are basically going to pick something at random, because it comes by so fast.

"So I think that social can potentially deliver things from a targeted community to you, but as the social promiscuity increases, it becomes more and more random and untargeted.

"And then of course you have always got your most popular and server-based recommendations, which will fill in, particularly when you don't have social-based recommendations.

"So I think the answer is that it is always going to need some combination of the four of those sources, and different people will want different weighting. More mature audiences will often like the trusted authority more than younger audiences, which may wish for more social, peer-based recommendations."