BLOBwise uses social networks to generate personalized content recommendations directly on TV screens

Zero in on what your peers are watching and say goodbye to long, fruitless EPG and Internet TV searches.

March 27, 2009 - Milan, Italy - Neptuny and TVBLOB announce "BLOBwise", the first Social TV Recommendation System for over-the-top IPTV. Based on Neptuny's ContentWise engine, "BLOBwise" along with a Telsey BLOBbox radically change what's possible on TV: users expand their range of content options including EPG, podcasts, pay-per-view VOD, and other Internet TV channels and services, plus experience never before possible social interactivity on TV. The potential of the recommendation engine will be demonstrated at IPTV World Forum London (25-27 March) at Neptuny booth #352 and the BLOBbox can be seen at Telsey booth #19.

"We are very happy to work with Neptuny because of their visionary approach in applying the spirit of the Internet to TV," says Fabrizio Caffarelli, TVBLOB CEO and founder. "They go beyond uni-directional recommendations that are based only on a user's taste and history and integrate new Web 2.0 social media possibilities. In fact, BLOBwise also leverages a user's social networks to provide suggestions of relevant content highlighted by friends and family; privacy is protected by considering just relationships and ignoring  sensitive data."

TVBLOB integrated the ContentWise technology (http://www.neptuny.com/contentwise) in the BLOBbox middleware, making it accessible to a whole new range of TV-centric consumer electronics devices that promise average television viewers new freedom in using their televisions by letting them directly tap into the explosion of content and services available on the Internet.

"Once the richness of Internet arrives directly on TV (and BLOBbox is making this possible), the challenge for users will quickly become how to find and discover what's most relevant and interesting to them", says Fabio Violante, Neptuny CEO. "ContentWise works transparently in the background, processing only relevant data and providing personalized recommendations available on the television screen. It's a great way to streamline the content discovery process and a whole new way to experience TV."

Content recommendation applications that leverage Facebook and BLOBwise are planned to be publicly availabile this summer . TVBLOB has released a free, open source SDK available at BLOBforge (http://www.blobforge.com), an Open Source TV Development Community that lets developers invent new services for TV while using standard web technologies like Java, Ajax, HTML and open Web technologies.

The BLOBbox is available for purchase now from TecnologieCreative at (http://www.tecnologiecreative.it) in Italy or directly on the BLOBbox website (http://www.tvblobbox.com). It requires a standard television with analog or HDMI input and a broadband connection.

Press contacts
TVBLOB: Lisa Morris, VP Sales & Marketing, TVBLOB S.r.l., +39 02 3656 2440
Neptuny: Darshna Kamani, Neptuny Account Manager, Eskenzi PR Ltd, +44 (0)20 7183 2834.

TVBLOB
TVBLOB Srl (http://www.tvblob.com) is a software and service development company with offices in Milan, Italy and Kanagawa, Japan. For more than 5 years, it has been building its rich, TV-centric platform to deliver next generation “over-the-top” TV services. The BLOBbox is the company’s first consumer product, released in cooperation with Telsey of Treviso, Italy.

Neptuny
Neptuny (http://www.neptuny.com) is a technology leader in providing optimization solutions for telecommunication operators and IPTV providers. Neptuny technologies are specialized in managing and mining immense amounts of data gathered from different sources to provide real-time business information. Neptuny’s ContentWise has been the first recommendation solution to  provide advanced recommendations on STB deployed in large IPTV environments.