Smart Screen Exclusive

By Lyndsey Schaefer

At any time of day, given the hundreds and hundreds of channels to surf through on television, it seems like there should be something of interest to watch. Don’t put down the remote just yet – Boxfish is here to help find exactly what you are looking for on live TV – whether it’s the older movie that you’ve been reminiscing about, the latest gossip on the troubled celebrity du jour or the real-time statistics on your favorite sports team.

Boxfish’s Live Guide platform launched in the fall of 2012, and captures close to 1,000 TV channels in the U.S. Boxfish’s Live Guide is currently available in the iTunes store, and enables users to search live TV. For example, if you were a fan of soccer player David Beckham, you could find any instance of not only soccer games that he is playing in at the time, but also will identify any programs mentioning his name. Users can also set notifications for certain words or topics, view topic-specific clips and determine the number of times it has been mentioned the past few days.

Boxfish has deals in place with AT&T, DirecTV and TiVo, giving them access to those operators’ set-top boxes.

“People spend $120 a month on cable and only watch about four channels,” says Eoin Dowling, Boxfish’s CEO and Founder. “Where we’re winning with the operators is people finding channels that they didn’t know were of interest to them. And now we’re starting to get access to their DVR functionality. “

The Live Guide can look two weeks ahead – and is set to release an Android version with Google Voice capabilities that will allow users to see what’s trending, and also allow for remote DVR usage.

“We’re opening our platform to third parties, and we’ve been working with operators on this API, opening up search to live TV, what’s trending, what topics are being discussed. We’re going to work with other second screen apps as soon as this API becomes public,” Dowling explains.

Dowling says that he and the Boxfish team spent more than a year on the data on TV before releasing any type of guide. Boxfish is helping the MSOs figure out what people are watching, listening to and when they tune in and out, which creates opportunities for targeted advertising based on more than just demographics.

“We’re actually not social TV – we’re anti-social in a way. Our focus is to use this data to provide a discovery layer,” says Dowling.

Now that Boxfish has joined the 2nd Screen Society, they’ll be able to expand their work with other companies in the second screen ecosystem.

“I have been going to 2nd Screen Society conferences for the last year and a half and see what they’re doing is positive for the industry – it’s a great exchange of information and ideas and they’re driving things forward. One of the differences between London and the West Coast is that there, everyone was siloed, but here, the 2nd Screen Society brings people together to drive things so much faster than other industries,” says Dowling.

For more information or to download the Boxfish Live Guide, visit www.boxfish.com.