Enabling Content Discovery in an IPTV System : Using Data from Online Social Networks

Sammanfattning: Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is a way of delivering television over the Internet, which enables two-way communication between an operator and its users. By using IPTV, users have freedom to choose what content they want to consume and when they want to consume it. For example, users are able to watch TV shows after they have been aired on TV, and they can access content that is not part of any linear TV broadcasts, e.g. movies that are available to rent. This means that, by using IPTV, users can get access to more video content than is possible with the traditional TV distribution formats. However, having more options also means that deciding what to watch becomes more difficult, and it is important that IPTV providers facilitate the process of finding interesting content so that the users find value in using their services. In this thesis, the author investigated how a user’s online social network can be used as a basis for facilitating the discovery of interesting movies in an IPTV environment. The study consisted of two parts, a theoretical and a practical. In the theoretical part, a literature study was carried out in order to obtain knowledge about different recommender system strategies. In addition to the literature study, a number of online social network platforms were identified and empirically studied in order to gain knowledge about what data is possible to gather from them, and how the data can be gathered. In the practical part, a prototype content discovery system, which made use of the gathered data, was designed and built. This was done in order to uncover difficulties that exist with implementing such a system. The study shows that, while it is is possible to gather data from different online social networks, not all of them offer data in a form that is easy to make use of in a content discovery system. Out of the investigated online social networks, Facebook was found to offer data that is the easiest to gather and make use of. The biggest obstacle, from a technical point of view, was found to be the matching of movie titles gathered from the online social network with the movie titles in the database of the IPTV service provider; one reason for this is that movies can have titles in different languages.