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TV app Zeebox relaunches as Beamly — a social network for TV lovers

UK social TV app Zeebox hopes to lose its ‘geeky male’ audience by rebranding itself as a mainstream product.

Social TV app Zeebox has rebranded itself as Beamly in an effort to become more mainstream and lose its ‘geeky male’ audience. Whereas Zeebox was perceived as a standard TV guide, Beamly will encourage people to ‘follow’ certain TV shows, celebrities and other Beamly users. 

The new look of the TV Guide on Beamly

Its makers have been adding the new social features over the course of the last two years. It wasn’t until 6 months ago, however, that the company set about relaunching Zeebox completely, turning it into something that more closely resembles a mainstream social network for TV lovers. The changes, according to co-founder and chief technology officer Anthony Rose, have changed Beamly’s user demographic, with 62 per cent of users being aged 16-24 and female.

Mr Rose said: “As we made these changes, the audience demographic for Zeebox began shifting. When we launched, it was a very male geeky audience, all about remote-controlling and remote-recording and the TV guide.”

The TV guide will still be a part of the app, but all the other features will be used for social networking. ‘TV rooms’, for example, are rooms for individual shows. These rooms will feature games and enable fans to chat to each interact live.

Rose said: “For the next season of House of Cards, for example, we will have a TV room for each episode, and you’ll be able to mark the ones you’ve watched. It’s very coarse-grained: just hashtag HouseofCards.”

TV Rooms will allow users to interact with others

There will also be a feed of activity and show recommendations, which will make Beamly appear more like a social network. Mr Rose added: “[Over] the last six months we’ve set about transitioning from model one, which was essentially that synchronised Twitter playalong experience, to a fully fledged social network for television.”

Rose said that people came back to the site twice as often after they gained the ability to follow shows. Once they could follow people, they came back 10 times as often.

Do you like how Zeebox has been revamped into a social network for television? Think it’s a good move? Let us know your thoughts by posting a comment below.

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