Social viewing

Social viewing (also known as Watch Party[1][2] or GroupWatch[3]) describes a recently developed practice revolving around the ability for multiple users to aggregate from multiple sources and view online videos together in a synchronized viewing experience.

Typically the experience also involves some form of instant messaging or communication to facilitate discussion pertaining to the common viewing experience.

History

The term in this context originated with the Toronto and Los Angeles-based company View2Gether[4] which has created proprietary technology for aggregating content from sources not controlled by the user for synchronized play and inclusion in common playlists by multiple participants with a commensurate instant messaging chat function. Other sites which provide similar functionality include Oortle (Photophlow),[5] SeeToo[6] and development of social viewing for existing portals such as Yahoo have recently been announced.[7]

The term has been used in some cases to describe online viewing within the framework of a social network,[8] however View2gether and similar sites have reconfigured the term to mean a common viewing experience as a social activity.

Social viewing has also been used in the past to describe activities such as gathering for the viewing of particular television programs, such as soap operas.[9]

Some examples of modern social viewing sites include Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Zoom, and Twitter.

It was also officially added as a built-in feature in some over-the-top media services in various names. While Amazon and Hulu both call it Watch Party,[1][2] Disney+ (which offers it only in some countries) calls it GroupWatch.[3]

Social viewing experience

Nowadays we can watch a video while interacting with other people thanks to social viewing and all the resources that it provide us. We can watch a movie while chatting with our friends or discus about a concrete scene.[10][11] One factor to improve could be the synchronization between users, to be sure that everyone is watching the same scene, so that no problem arises while discussing it.[12]

Notes and references
  1. "Prime Video Watch Party: Stream TV & Movies With Friends". Amazon. Archived from the original on 2022-07-10. Retrieved 2022-07-10.
  2. "Hulu Watch Party". Hulu. Archived from the original on 2022-07-10. Retrieved 2022-07-10.
  3. "Disney+ adds a co-watching feature called GroupWatch". TechCrunch. 2020-09-29. Archived from the original on 2022-07-10. Retrieved 2022-07-10.
  4. View2gether – Welcome to Social Viewing Archived 2007-12-13 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Oortle home page Archived 2008-04-29 at the Wayback Machine
  6. "SeeToo home page". Archived from the original on 2008-04-30. Retrieved 2008-04-25.
  7. Zync from Yahoo! Research Berkeley Archived 2008-06-10 at the Wayback Machine
  8. "Bebo Launches Open Media Platform for Social Viewing; 22 TV Partners". 13 November 2007. Archived from the original on 10 December 2009. Retrieved 5 November 2009.
  9. Tager, M. (1 December 2004). "Soap opera viewing in a communal context: an ethnographic examination of the viewing experiences of black Zulu-speaking students living in university residences". Communicare: Journal for Communication Sciences in Southern Africa (published December 2004). 23 (2): 1–20. Archived from the original on 31 August 2022. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
  10. Rothe, Sylvia (2020). "Social viewing in cinematic virtual reality: a design space for social movie applications". Virtual Reality. 25 (3): 613–630. doi:10.1007/s10055-020-00472-4.
  11. Boronat, Fernando (2021). "Wersync: A web platform for synchronized social viewing enabling interaction and collaboration". Journal of Network and Computer Applications. 175: 102939. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2020.102939. hdl:10251/189731. ISSN 1084-8045. S2CID 230571472.
  12. Marfil, Dani (2019). "Enhancing the Broadcasted TV Consumption Experience With Broadband Omnidirectional Video Content". IEEE Access. 7: 171864–171883. doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2956084. hdl:10251/156562. S2CID 209322718. Archived from the original on 2021-06-08. Retrieved 2021-06-08.
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