Seevibes Brings Social Media Monitoring to TV Broadcasters
Seevibes is a social media monitoring tool dedicated exclusively to TV broadcasters. The company was founded by Laurent Maisonnave, a well known tech community member. Laurent is an active blogger, President of the non-profit, Ile Sans Fil, and co-founder of Podcamp Montreal and MediaCamp Montreal. He’s joined by Cedric Fontaine, who handles the tech behind Seevibes. Cedric’s a senior developer and founder of Terroirs Quebec, the leading web store for local Quebec food products.
Laurent describes Seevibes as, “…a platform that measures the social audience of TV broadcasts to add value to the commercial break.”
More specifically, Seevibes measures the activity of viewers on social networks to calculate market share of a TV broadcast and provides detailed profiles of viewers with breakdowns by age, sex and location. “This data helps us visualize the social community connected to each program and thus to interact with them to build loyalty and promote the contents of a TV channel,” says Laurent.
Ultimately, Seevibes aims to help TV broadcasters generate additional advertising revenue through increased knowledge of their audience and by optimizing social media campaigns for advertisers.
Laurent believes that TV broadcasters need their own dedicated tool to social media monitoring. Although it’s not yet clear how Seevibes will be different (and TV broadcasters are already using social media monitoring tools), Laurent believes that focusing on a niche market will provide him a competitive advantage. “I’ve been inspired by my friends Sylvain Carle and Sebastien Provencher, members of the Seevibes advisory board, who take an approach similar with Needium for detecting local business opportunities,” says Laurent.
He also debunks the thinking that the TV is a declining medium being replaced by the Web and mobile devices for content consumption. He says, “…in the latest media predictions from Deloitte, numbers all show that the cultural dominance that television has acquired over the years is still an undeniable fact.”
“Like all the geeks of my generation, I plug a ton of devices into my TV to watch videos — Apple TV, PlayStation, SlingBox. But when my wife watches Entertainment Tonight or Coronation Street, she doesn’t want to have to look online or rummage through a hard drive. She wants her show, now! This is why I’m confident that nothing has yet surpassed television.
It’s obvious that we will be consuming more and more TV content on our mobile device, our computer or, eventually, on a new device that does not yet exist. That’s not important, because behind this there will be the same TV networks that make the broadcasts and collect money from the advertising.
The only change we’ll see is perhaps a shift in the kind of shows that TV broadcasters will present. I think their added value will come from live or exclusive broadcasts like sports matches, talk shows or political debates more than from the simple TV series that can be found on many other platforms.”
Since starting Seevibes last summer, Laurent has been bootstrapping the company. In January 2011 he decided to speed things up by building a team and dedicating most of his time to the project. The alpha version of Seevibes has been running since January. So far they’re studying the ten main French channels in Canada, and will soon start analyzing the English ones. The company grabs, filters and analyzes messages from Twitter, Facebook profiles and Facebook pages. Laurent notes, “The first results have been awesome. We can observe so many exciting trends in the social interaction around TV shows. We have a qualified database of 2,000 people.”
Over the next six months Laurent hopes to build the Seevibes team to boost both their technical and commercial development. He says, “I’d like to take this opportunity to call out to competent, motivated people who can see the potential in this project the way I can.”
He’s also focused on building awareness of Seevibes with TV networks and professionals. As he point out, “We want to help them make more money. That’s easy to grasp.”
Seevibes will very quickly be moving into the U.S. and start tracking U.S. based channels and TV shows. They’re also working on a number of Facebook apps to complement Seevibes. Laurent also points out that in order to accelerate the pace of development he will be looking to raise additional capital, ideally from local investors, but potentially from others in Canada and abroad.
Related posts:
- Media Sales Consultant at Praized Media (Full-Time & Part-Time)
- MConcierge Brings Mobile Social Engagement to the Hotel Industry
- Ludia Sells Additional 51% to Fremantle Media
- Rogers Media acquerra BV! Media pour 0,40 $ par action au comptant
- Praized Media Appoints Peter Diedrich as President and CEO
