Magine plans social push

Cloud-based TV service Magine is looking to add more social functionality into the service in a bid to boost content discovery and recommendations.

Speaking at the OTTtv World Summit in London last week, Jon Gisby, Magine’s executive vice-president of business development, said that though Magine is yet to formally announce its plans, it is looking at layering more social functionality on top of the service to enable “broadcasters and content owners to do very, very interesting things within the interface.”

Gisby said that authentication via a social platform would mean “you can then do all sorts of things around knowing what your friends are watching via the service at the same time.”

“That’s … [a] service that we can layer on top very easily and that introduces interesting things around curation and discovery. I think, in way, in terms of the technology we’ve built, it’s a Swiss army knife. It can do a whole bunch of different things,” said Gisby.

“Like any business that’s trying to find the right spot into the market to enter, the service we’re starting with is the mass-market service around watching TV on any screen with no box and a simple contract,” he said, explaining that Magine will evolve over time.

Magine offers online access to linear TV with a backwards EPG and says it aims to “re-invent TV” for the internet age. The service debuted in Sweden earlier this year, and is also now live in Germany.