The TV guide doesn’t know who you are, what your favorite movie genre is, what you’ve watched in the past, what your mood is, and so on. Because of that, it is incapable of providing you with any recommendations about what to watch on your TV, or which videos you’re likely going to enjoy consuming right now on your PC or even your mobile phone. With the sheer volume of available channels and VOD content out there, that’s becoming quite a problem for many people. But if beeTV has its way, that problem could soon become a nuisance from past times.
The Milan, Italy-based startup founded in 2006 by an international team of experienced technology and media experts, has just raised $8 million in Series B funding from Italian VC firm Innogest, the largest investment this fund has ever made. BeeTV aims to use the capital to ‘change the way we watch TV’ by pioneering what it calls a Personal Content Channel (PPC), a personal TV suggestion engine that helps you find your way in the ocean of VOD titles and channels out there by surfacing the best choice for you based on your profile and even the mood you’re in.
Here’s how they pitch it:
“beeTV offers the platform operator’s subscribers their own Personal Content Channel (PCC), which resides in their set top box (whether IPTV, cable, satellite, mobile or DTT), their mobile phones and their PC. This unique Personal Content Channel identifies the subscriber, searches all the content sources, including broadcast TV, subscription TV, VOD, SVOD, PPV, and PVR/Catch-up and pushes the relevant content to that subscriber.”
The company’s recommendation engine comes in three flavors: beeSTBox is its flagship product which was launched at the recent DEMOfall 08 conference in San Diego (see video below). It’s a solution designed for multicast distribution platforms including cable, satellite and IPTV. To manage, control and share your online TV viewing experience, the company created a product called beeWeb, and it’s also bringing the PCC to mobile devices to enable always-on connectivity and the ability to interact with set-top boxes on the go. It currently has an iPhone application in the works that will allow TV viewers to control their STBs, get recommendations for shows & movies that are relevant to them and available in their specific TV subscription, and also enable them to watch trailers and set their STBs to record or create notifications for the shows they would like to watch.
BeeTV is currently focusing on finalizing its 1.5 version and claims to be engaged with some of the leading TV providers in the world for trials that are expected to roll into their commercial phase by the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was actually a lot of interest for this type of technology coming from content owners, publishers and media companies.
This one looks like a winner, and that was even before I knew who is spearheading the algorithm team that’s responsible for the powerful recommendation technology behind the platform: Gavin Potter, an experimental psychologist formerly responsible for IBM’s Centre for Business Optimization in Europe, who you might know as “Just a Guy in a garage” from the Netflix Prize competition. See this Wired profile for more background on the man.
I’m just hoping beeTV and their investors are in it for the long run and don’t get acquired by one of the majors before they have the chance to expand their platform on a worldwide scale through partnerships and white-label distribution deals. Because everyone deserves the right to stop wasting time looking for content they want to consume thanks to sophisticated technology that relieves us from the need to make choices for ourselves.
I find it very interesting whenever startups are able to add value to an existing service, mainly because these services (cable providers, in this case) have the capacity and money to do it themselves, and reap all of the rewards directly.
It seems they are very slow to adopt any type of creative, out of the box approach to improving their service, and rely on acquisition’s to improve their service. An exception coming to mind is Hulu.
If they could add a language filtering settings to their algorithms, so the people/families could screen out obscene language, it would be a huge bonus. Companies underestimate the pent-up demand for this capability.
looks very interesting and promissing. i dont have a TV for almost 3 years now because of the problem beetv are trying to solve..
Good luck!
Looks like they have figured out how to really take their technology and make it work on any screen. I’m interested in seeing how far they can go with this product.
MBA says: “Hey, I know! Let’s clone last.fm, but – GET THIS – with VIDEO!”
So lastfm copied amazon?, who did netflix copy?. Recommendation algorithims are obviously important for users, advertisers and publishers. To discredit their technology by calling it a clone of lastfm is very naive and shortsighted. How are we supposed to advance if we cant build upon existing ideas and take them to the next level?
I think it is not about the technology than about the content. If the content is bad they can recommend whatever they want – I wont watch it.
It isnt hard to define an algorithm that analyzes some facts and recommends a TV show – it is way harder to make a contract with the company that own the TV show.
$8m for tv recommendations? Isn’t there a better use of capital given the crumbling economy, world poverty, etc? Unreal.
Investing in world poverty does not have a high rate of return.
You clearly have no idea how basic economics work do you…?
That $8M will help to start a new company, and from the sounds of it a really interesting one. That company will need employees to make it work. Those employees will get paid. They will probably hire more employees, who are also getting paid. Not only will each employee now be able to buy things they need, they have just increased the demand for all the products and services that they will consume… thus creating a demand for more workers in those areas. On top of that, the company is going to need to buy products and services from other companies, which all have employees they are paying… Do you get where I’m going with this? Sure a VC makes a pretty penny out of the deal if its successful, but guess what, he/she took the risk and in the end, truly made a difference.
Just because the money isn’t going directly into the hands of a charity, doesn’t mean it isn’t making a WORLD of difference.
What’s “unreal” is how many people like you don’t understand this concept…
Could you please the explain above concept to the current administration and automobile executives?
I would also add to the economics lesson that one cannot spend money they don’t have without consequences, it is only acceptable to use credit for large ticket items only, like homes and cars, that the avervae wage earner could not buy without, you don’t use credit cards for groceries and meals, if you charge, you owe, if you buy a car, you make payments, and if you don’t, it’s not yours and gets “repoed” and you still owe the balance, if you take out a mortgage you are responsible for reading the terms, and if you screw up and expect to be bailed out because of your own ignorance, and greed, you should not be bailed out at other’s expense, or even bailed out at all, but if you are, don’t be surprised if it comes back to bite you. There is no free lunch and as soon as consumers get that, the whole economy will improve. Where in the hell did Americans get this “stong sense of entitlement?” What an insult to out immigrants and others who busted their butts to live and prosper because of their own blood, sweat, tears, or their intellect, and the opportunity we have here??? I see immigrants everyday that understand this.
By the way, I live on $12,000 per year and have a paid for house and car and have never had a penny handed to me in my life. It’s not the best I have ever lived, but it’s not the worst either. At least I don’t have to worry about any one taking my house or car.
Jack Welch for President!
Because you place lower value on the consumption of television content versus, say, herding and milking goats doesn’t mean that investing in technologies that make consuming television easier an “unreal” act. Personally, I don’t like goat meat or milk and have no interest in “participating” in any activity related to goat herding. I do enjoy the convenience of my television to get news and entertainment from around the world. So, why do you care about placing some value statement on the activity that millions of 1st world people enjoy. Please, go invest yourself in helping the 3rd world herd goats. I’m sure they would rather be melting their brains on TVs rather than melting under the heat of the sun in the field with the goats.
@get real:
People have no money, can’t go out, and are cutting costs (i.e. Satellite TV) – online TV recommendation at a time like this is genius. And also, grow up and make comments using your name.
@Robin Wauters, a small typo: Personal Content Channel (PPC) = Personal Content Channel (PCC)
It is absolutely necessary with the no of channels ever increasing. It is becoming harder than ever to track the channel no’s and remember them. Hope they don’t collect data and sell it.
It is absolutely necessary with the no of channels ever increasing. It is becoming harder than ever to track the channel no’s and remember them. Hope they don’t collect data and sell it like google. (lol)
It’s interesting that Italy’s tech industry has managed to come out with some nice start-ups recently.
I hear more and more about Italy based startups and less about startups originated from Israel/Germany/France.
Maybe Sarah Lacy should visit there sometime soon
Sorry for messing up your theory: beeTV’s R&D is located in Israel. 2 out of the 3 founders are Israelies.
Funny…The CEO and CTO are Israelis
A new israeli start-up in this arena is http://qwiji.com/
A Personal channel for all web content.
Very interesting idea. Nice story Robin.
PPC = Personal Content Channel?
I think they accidentally the acronym.
this could work. sounds useful. more talent?
ChannelLocator.com – project yourself
Why don’t you “project yourself” off the side of a bridge. And take your crap business with you.
but will they be offering out pizza advice like http://www.worstpizza.com does? That is a tv show I would watch!
As a veteran of the interactive and streaming TV business I agree with the comment that vendors to big operators never win out. These innovators might get strung along until their funding is gone and they can be acquired on the cheap – but finding deployment on the backs of cable and telco is tough unless you have content that powers subscribers or ad splits. Even TiVo couldn’t break into the business as a licensed platform. This is at least the case in the US market, where we still wait for basic enhanced TV on low end STBs.
I still think recommendations from humans are the way to go. If there was an algorithm that recommended quality content that people wanted to watch, Hollywood wouldn’t be making so many flops.
Great Idea– the less time have to spend searching for content the better…
Mark try to search the web using http://qwiji.com/
That will save you time & make you happier
What’s the difference between this and Fast Forward (http://www.ffwd.com), which has been doing something very similar for about two years. (Other than the $8M…)
This is an innovative start-up right from the heartland of Europe – Italy
Cable MSO/ Satellite operator clients are tough. There is typically a long sales cycle when working with them.
Note: My TiVo cable cards work, so at least the STB (set top box) side of equation is opening
It will be interesting to see if these “in the knitting” approaches beat the “over the top” services one can run from open nets like Twitter for example, where # conversations on shows are already common.
A few thoughts:
http://broadstu...Ex-Machina.html
I really don’t think you can test or evaluate a personalization system for TV viewing without gaining access to the clickstream data for actual set top boxes with access to live TV and VOD. Without that data, I think these approaches are no different from FFWD or ChoiceStream or Netflix.
So, unfortunately, until an MSO or Telco offering TV puts a personalization/recommendation system in place for live TV — we really just have a lot of noodling and experimentation.
Sound surprising no one commented on the fact that the beauty of content is diversification and the fortune of the net is the over abused term of ‘long tail’. If we start to ‘reccomed’ everything we will homologate everything and we will fall back to the 80/20 paradigm that everyone watches the same shows and most of the beauty of the vast offer of the net will be lost. And the majors win.
It was to see the beeTV team at IPTV World in NYC today. I hope they make it to TelcoTV as well.
It was nice to see the beeTV team at IPTV World in NYC today. I hope they make it to TelcoTV as well.
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