On November 19th, 2014, Australian/ U.S. based xTV (backed by Australian based Applabs, UST Global and Archimedes Labs) announced the commencement of a new Go To Market campaign to help accelerate the adoption of cloud based TV for the enterprise with UST Global and Microsoft.

Cloud has been the direction web has been going for a while now, but who’s ever heard of cloud based TV?

xTV offers a real-time platform that organizes an individual’s or company’s video content and  integrates their social media needs. All in one place, a personal or company wide .TV network, powered by Microsoft Azure, will update tailored selections from Youtube, Twitter, news services (RSS Feeds), stocks, and more.

Will the .tv domain replace the .com? xTV seems to think so.

Aussie Joe Ward, CEO of xTV, states “The combination of xTV, UST-Global and Microsoft is the perfect combination of complimentary offerings”.

“Enterprise Media is a tidal wave of new opportunity, evidenced by xTV’s strong customers and partners such as Microsoft, Intel & AOL” said Tony Velleca CIO of UST. He also states: “We’re looking forward to deploying xTV into many of our significant verticals and allowing xTV customers to tap into our 14,000 strong organizations to deploy any size online TV network.”

And what does Microsoft think?

Dianne O’Brien, senior director of business development for Cloud & Enterprise at Microsoft feels “The simplicity and speed of the xTV platform are key assets for our users,” and

“In a matter of minutes, Microsoft Azure customers can now build online TV networks that offer real-time TV experiences, helping maximize efficiency without impacting the quality or collaborative flexibility of the user experience. The result is rapid deployment of streaming media assets in one place for their employees, customers, partners and investors.”.

I am by no means and “enterprise” class business but would love to have my own cloud based .TV network. It seems to have a more “social” feel than a .com and would keep viewers engaged with my video content instead of them being steered away by YouTube suggestions.

For more info on xTV, check out Christopher Peri’s post titled “I Want My xTV”.

XTV is a internet video service for the enterprise. (IPTV) But it’s not useful to just enterprise users.  Imagine you have a number of videos that you want to publish about your small business or hobby.  Where do you put them?  Well YouTube or some other video cloud service typically.  That’s great and all, but the problem is once your user goes to YouTube, you pretty much lost them. You have to compete with videos of cats and Epic Rap battles of history.

What xTV offers is a closed experience where not only the videos you want your users to see are provided, but they can be organized into channels with each channel showing a list of thumbnails of the videos in that channel. Nice. But that is not where the win is …

Because this is internet based, displayed using any HTML5 compliant browser, the experience can be interactive.  So not only can your viewers watch your content, they can interact with screen as well.  If the screen happens to be a large monitor on a wall, then the users can capture a 2d QR code and interact using their cell phone.  Sweet eh?

So what are some use cases?  Well as I alluded to above, you may have a number of monitors in an office lobby, or displayed at an event that will play your videos in a loop.  With the QR code displayed at all times, visitors walking by can use their phone to interact with the video, perhaps answering questions in a quiz, or perhaps learn more about a company’s offerings or positions they are trying to hire for.  Since everything is internet based, they can even take the video loop playing on the screen and take it with them to view on their own devices.

More? Here is a use case I want to see…  I went a two trips recently.  In the hotel on the first trip, the hotel played a loop of videos about the local shoppes and attractions.  However this was a loop, I could not say, just see restaurants, I had to sit through content I was not interested in.  On the second trip, which I did not research ahead a time, I expected to see the same type of video feed, instead this place just had cable. So I was stuck with using Yelp, which is ok, but I would rather hear and see from the restaurant themselves.  How much better would it have been that I could have called up the restaurant channel at the hotel, or even on the way to the hotel to see what we might like to eat?

Now as you can guess, this is not just a general review of something I found on the internet, I have been an adviser to xTV for near three years and have joined the team full time.  So there!

Now back to the goodness… and why I’m writing this post…

There are many other great use cases that are being defined with customers, but what I wanted to write about, and perhaps get some feedback on, is what ELSE can we do with this?

Part of the xTV system is to allow users to create their own networks.  What interactive elements would people put on the display?  Or run on the phones browser? So let’s say you have a network with a bunch of channels with music. It’s HTML5 so anything you can imagine on a webpage is doable. There are the easy things; voting on content, comments, and of course online shopping.  But what else? Pull up lyrics perhaps? Read the musicians’ bio? Tour dates? One of my hobbies is VR.  So if I put a VR channel together, perhaps I could show a code that lets the user into a virtual world with other people who clicked on the code.

So check out the Network and let me know what you all think.  You can leave comments here on my blog or via contact us at xtv.net if you want it private.  Check the video below…

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=S87xKAXCn3M

Big Brands among first adopters of Twitter plus TV

There is a new type of internet TV out there.  Called xTV they focus on dynamic video content based on keywords or trending keywords on Twitter.  Imagine you could set up a TV feed on technology focusing on mobile devices and international news, and the latest from the auto industry.  The content is out there, its just impossible to find. xTV hopes to fix that by creating media center that does not try to appeal to the largest denominator which has given us gems like baby boo boo.  Also there is an enterprise play that allows corporations to create programming for waiting rooms, meeting room and even users screen savers.  “The world of enterprise media is exploding and as a result has been totally unmanageable.” Said Joe Ward, CEO of xTV . “Now we can put all this media back together in your own enterprise media network, so no matter where your viewers are, on a large screen TV, a screen saver on a PC or a tablet, xTV’s platform organizes all of your content into your own 24×7 enterprise media network.”

Press Release

October 15^th, 2013., Redwood City, Calif.

xTV, a Silicon Valley based company pioneering the new .TV era, today announced the deployment of its Connected TV and Media Management platform, featuring some of the world’s best known brands.

The xTV platform enables organizations to build their own enterprise media network that organizes all of the enterprise video, social & breaking news into a Real-time TV experience where the viewers can lean back and watch content on a big screen or lean into their mobile device.

“We’re extremely proud to announce big brands such as Microsoft as our first major deployments onto the new platform” Said Joe Ward, CEO at xTV. “Iconic brands are now seeing exponential growth in their media assets, particularly on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. The xTV platform brings all these assets back together in one place where viewers can watch and engage with them in real-time.”

“One of the really cool things is all of these streams coming together—it’s your own TV channel” Said Matt Thompson, General Manager of Development at Microsoft in a CBS TV interview regarding xTV.

The platform and networks are live now and can be accessed through the xTV web site, xtv-inc.com

Twitter plus TV comes to the Enterprise

One of the most compelling capabilities of the new xTV platform, is the Real-time data experience. A network can define both video content and associated feeds that display on their network, just like the tickers and side screens on CNBC or CNN, except they are active and clickable. These feeds also make up a “second screen” experience whereby a viewer can both control the big screen from their smartphone, and display content relevant to what they are watching on the second screen. A twitter feed for example.

Organizations can also map Twitter #tags against the media network’s TV channels which can then be interacted with in Real-time using any smartphone.

“As Twitter and video are now exploding in the enterprise, our patent-pending Real-time Twitter plus TV experience will increase the level of engagement between a viewer and the brand network significantly” Said Mr Ward. “It’s a very compelling way for consumers, employees, investors, partners and others to engage with any brand.”

Archimedes Labs Announces Expansion Financing for xTV

In conjunction with this announcement, Archimedes Labs – the Palo Alto incubator founded by Kambiz Hooshamand and the TechCrunch co-founder Keith Teare – is leading a financing round to enable xTV to continue to develop networks and to enhance its offering.

“xTV has built a very impressive capability. I am not surprised to see these big brands wanting to embrace the concept. Much of the video produced has a short life in the context of a news led web site, but once placed into a branded network, the same content remains relevant and compelling for a far longer time. Add to this the “second screen” capabilities, and the promise of networks being deployed into the new generation of set top boxes, and xTV has a bright future, bringing video content and associated data feeds together with engaged viewers”, said Keith Teare.. “We’re really pleased to be on board with them and we’re sure we will be joined by other investors in this round of financing. It’s exciting to see the momentum the Company is building.”

About xTV

xTV is the Next Generation Media Co. which delivers the platform to combine video assets with your realtime feeds to create a compelling way to experience your brand..

Founded in 2011 by Australian entrepreneur, Joe Ward, the company’s vision is to deliver any organization with the capability to lower the cost of content deployment and increase the consumption of their media by delivering a true, real-time, big and small screen TV experience, all without the need to install new devices or applications.

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