Link Management Group - Interactive TV Service Case Study

Interactive TV Service Case Study

Koopid
A new chat service was launched on digital satellite television for Koopid dating. Koopid Chat is a world first for interactive television. The instant messaging tool was a collaborative venture between three companies who worked closely with Sky Interactive to launch the service in record time.

Company Profile
Koopid is a commercially successful dating service. It has both a website and an interactive TV service in the Sky Active portal.

The Problem
Dating is a good motivator for peer to peer messaging and there was a clear opportunity to increase both connections and session times. The existing TV messaging functionality needed improvement to offer an experience more akin to web instant messaging services.

The Issues
Time to market needed to be minimised – the service had to be live for a Valentines promotion. The development required the co-ordination of a multi-discipline team, with designers, developers and database specialists. The costs and pitfalls of moderating multi-user chat rooms needed to be avoided.

The Actions
Link consultant John Withnell led the project, defining the functionality of the service and managing the delivery against a challenging timescale. Creative design and SDK application build was undertaken by Pushbutton, a specialist ‘red button’ agency. The back-end server capability and registration process was provided by Northern Interactive, the owners of the Koopid service.

The Results
The Koopid chat service went live on 1st February 2006 – fully two weeks ahead of its official St Valentine’s Day launch date. Instant messaging on TV is a big leap forward for satellite-based interactive television and is the kind of service that some commentators had not expected to see on TV screens in the UK until the arrival of commercially deployed IPTV services.

Viewers can take part in up to three simultaneous one-to-one chats. The service is quick and easy to use and benefits from a unique ‘predictive dictionary’ to simplify text-entry using the Sky remote. A bank of pre-written phrases allow novice chatters to make a quick start and a selection of fun emoticons help add a little sparkle to chat messages. Best of all, the service is instant – which adds a whole new dimension for Koopid users who previously could only flirt and interact with potential dates by using a mailbox based email service.

Link Management Group member John Withnell is Managing Director of Long Dog, a company that provides a one-stop-shop for project planning, design and build of interactive TV solutions. See www.longdog.tv for more details.