Comcast rolls out remote control accessed through Twitter

October 10, 2013 Leave a comment

Comcast rolls out remote control accessed through Twitter

7:27pm EDT

By Jennifer Saba

(Reuters) – Comcast Corp announced on Wednesday that it developed a new remote control feature in partnership with Twitter that allows users to turn the channel through a tweet. The “See It” button enables viewers to tune in to a live or On Demand show like Sunday Night Football or “The Voice” through their set-top box or mobile device. In addition, the button will let users program digital video recorders or to buy movie tickets through Fandango.“Now with See It, they’ll be able to tune in directly from Twitter,” Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, said in a statement.

Comcast and Twitter said they are in discussions with other distribution partners and TV networks to use the feature to promote their content. The hope is the “See It” button will become as ubiquitous as the Facebook “like.”

“There is a lot of promotion and discussion around entertainment on Twitter but the link around that consumption is broken,” Sam Schwartz, Comcast chief business development officer told Reuters. “This is another tool to help people find what they want to watch.”

With the See It button, a tweet promoting “The Voice” will let a Comcast Xfinity subscriber directly watch, record or remind a viewer directly through that tweet.

Media companies will also have a better sense of how to target Twitter efforts since they will be armed with aggregate data of people watching programs.

“We will know how many of those tweets generate consumption back on TV,” Schwartz said.

Twitter, which is getting ready to make one of the most highly anticipated public stock debuts since Facebook, is trying to capitalize on its relationship with those who use social media while they watch TV.

The 140-character messaging platform is setting its sights on grabbing a piece of the TV advertising market, the first stop for brands that spend billions of dollars a year for TV commercials.

One of Twitter’s efforts is a program called Amplify, that allows broadcasters to show video clips and ads through tweets that are coordinated with what is being shown on TV.

Comcast, the owner of NBC and the largest cable provider in the United States, said the network is participating in the Amplify program. CBS and the NFL recently announced partnerships with Twitter through Amplify.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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