Joe Conboy, Director of Product Management iTV at Cox Communications, was a keynote speaker at last week’s virtual social TV conference held by User Insight (you can watch a few video clips here). Cox is the 5th largest MSO in the US as of June 2011. In an interview with Lost Remote, Conboy discusses the future of the set-top box, EBIF (the technical name – Enhanced Binary Interchange Format – for a standardized way to do interactive TV, at a national scale) and Tru2Way technologies that are making ads more interactive.
Lost Remote: How does Cox approach social TV?
Joe Conboy: Cox is very focused on our customers and their changing viewing behaviors and we are working to deliver our products in the most useful, valuable way possible. Overall, Cox is focused on delivering content to our customers the way they most want to use it. For example, Cox TV Online, which launched earlier this year, gives Cox Advanced TV customers the ability to authenticate and gain access to thousands of titles via www.cox.com/tv. We are focused on delivering on viewing flexibility that our customers have grown to expect. We also understand that the key part of social TV is giving our customers the ability to interact with each other about our services. Cox is working within the industry to listen to what television consumers are saying about their viewing experience, as this feedback is very important as we develop new products and services.
LR: How are they infusing social into their iTV products?
JC: Cox’s iTV products are currently very straightforward experiences. We allow customers to navigate to their local weather, play simple puzzlers and card games. We offer cross platform interactivity with TV Caller ID. Cox also offers Zone Channels which create a mini guide experience, allowing customers to quickly scan 6 live feeds at once and select the channel they want to watch within three different genres: kids, news and sports.