With the advent of video-on-demand services and digital video
recorders, the way in which we consume media is undergoing a
fundamental change. People today are less likely to watch shows at the
same time, let alone the same place. As a result, television viewing,
which was once a social activity, has been reduced to a passive and
isolated experience. To study this issue, we developed a system called
CollaboraTV and demonstrated its ability to support the communal
viewing experience through a month-long field study. Our study shows
that users understand and appreciate the utility of asynchronous
interaction, are enthusiastic about CollaboraTV's engaging social
communication primitives and value implicit show recommendations from
friends. Our results both provide a compelling demonstration of a
social television system and raise new challenges for social television
communication modalities.