Smart Screen Exclusive

By Lyndsey Schaefer

Fabrizio Capobianco’s family is very passionate about sports, soccer in particular. His father doesn’t miss a match, and his brother signs on to Skype so they can watch matches together virtually. On one such occasion, Capobianco noticed that they were yelling at the screen at the same time, and from there, the idea for TOK.tv was born.

TOK.tv has built a second screen app that is used to talk live with friends while watching TV with a device in your lap.

“We’re bringing a voice to the second screen. We allow you to talk to your friends while you watch live TV,” Capobianco, CEO of TOK.tv, explains. “If you’re watching baseball and there is a homerun, currently you can go on Facebook or Twitter, and write ‘home run!!’ or do it over a text message. We believe when there’s a home run, you want to scream that out.”

Capobianco says that naturally, people want to have friends over to watch sports to make it a social experience. Using a tablet to type “home run” means that you could miss the next play. With TOK.tv’s Baseball App, which was launched in the post-season of 2012, viewers get supplementary info on the second screen that isn’t available on the primary screen. Then, they click an icon to talk with friends about the game. There’s also a layer with sound effects to enhance the TOK.tv experience. The baseball app is currently available for iPad; with an iPhone version set to release in a few months, followed by an Android version later this year.

The free TOK.tv baseball app was launched on opening day of the Major League Baseball season a few weeks ago. It quickly went to number 13 of the app store for social networking. 42 percent of the people who downloaded the app ended up registering for the service, Capobianco says; while 40 – 50 percent of active users come back daily to use the app. TOK.tv found that people utilized the baseball app for an average of 57 minutes.

The company plans to expand to apps for other sports, but first wanted to focus on perfecting the baseball app. Outside of sports, TOK also built an app for this year’s Oscars, where they found that 68 percent of users were female.

“With using the voice, you keep the app on, and you can put it in the background and still browse ads,” Capobianco says. “Voice fits the TV paradigm – people are using the app, and staying with it. At the end of the day, we are doing the digital version of me talking to a friend on the couch, not creating a new paradigm. We are trying to make the primary screen better.”

TOK.tv can also increase viewership because if users’ friends are not online, they can still be called using the app, and urge them to turn on the game. TOK.tv is currently focused on growing its user base. They are also starting to partner with third parties to work with brands and broadcasters to use their social networking voice platform to enable outside apps.

“In general, there is usually one group of people that shape the market and you want to be a part of it. You learn so much from others who have been in the industry longer. 2nd Screen Society is the organization for second screen.”

 For more information on TOK.tv, go here.