Social Networking 2.0

Despite some stupid and controversial moves, (like the recent one by Facebook to change the Terms of Use stripping users of the rights to their content), Internet - powered social networking keeps on gaining in popularity. We suddenly find we live in communities. Communities that even cross each other and are totally location - independent. Yes, there still is a barrier of timezone, or - more important - culture, but it would be nearly impossible to find a person these days, who does not have friends abroad.

The other day I had an idea of a device / service (I even wanted to patent it). A box sitting between the Net and a TV (like Apple TV) with an interface to a webcam. The idea behind was to achieve social watching experience, but with an ordinary TV and voice / interactive video overlay, instead of PC and "just" texting. I even envisioned an Apple TV box where you could just plug in any USB webcam, and some software to overlay a strip of your buddies' faces on top of the broadcast stream. Then I started digging for existing patents on that and found a number of them. A few examples:

• USPAT6590602. Digital television system overlays subscriber two-way communication during broadcast program delivery to create virtual audience community. Individual or group billing and advertisement is personalized per DTV receiver program viewing and/or conferencing activity. Subscriber receiver includes camera and other media I/O device for multi-way video conferencing. Participants may be added or removed dynamically during programming or conferencing.
• USPAT6243129. A videoconferencing arrangement that selectively creates a composite arrangement of videoconferencing data along with video data from a supplemental video source. In one embodiment, a first analog-to-digital converter provides digital videoconferencing data from a camera source, and a second analog-to-digital converter is arranged to provide digital video data from a supplemental analog video signal source, such as a broadcast television signal. Digital video signals from a remote videoconferencing arrangement are decompressed and provided as input, along with the video data from the camera and supplemental video data, to a video processor. Responsive to selection signals, the video processor scales selected video data and overlays the scaled video data on selected other video data. For example, a live television broadcast can be overlaid with remote videoconferencing data.

So my idea was not that novel... or may be I was simply late... But despite these patents being already five or ten years old, such social watching scenarios are not popular yet. But this is going to change, soon I believe. And Facebook has a good chance to be in the center of it all. Sling, the maker of the famous SlingBox video relay device has recently introduced an integration with Facebook. At the Mobile World Congress the Global Mobile Award for the best mobile handset went to INQ who bypassed all the Nokias and Androids (not to mention the absent iPhones) with the INQ1. And Facebook is the central application the INQ1 thrives on.

Social networking is breaking free from our computers and coming down to phones and TVs. And other devices. Think fridges and on line grocery shopping. Should not fridges from your neighborhood get together, compile list of products for tonight's party and negotiate better volume discounts while allowing the friends to agree on the menu?