a toolbox for tracking shows you love today & discovering shows you'll love tomorrow

Built from the ground up for the broadcast industry, Voila uses site activity and social media data to deliver valuable video and audio product features:

For audiences

Discover and keep track of favourite shows and personalities

For platforms & broadcasters

Use all existing product and platform data to extend user journeys, drive login and broaden usage

For developers

Zero-hassle Software as a Service, with a simple RESTful API

For compliance

Data ownership doesn't change. Works with existing T&Cs, everything is stored and processed in the EU

tour Of Voila features

A Different Product for Everyone

Optimise your product for views, loyalty and revenue, using data languishing in server logs and analytics systems.

Common Sense Recommendations

An intelligent mix of editorial picks and automated personalisation, getting people to the right content fast.

Personal Watchlists

Subscribe to favourite shows to get a personal schedule and on demand playlist.

Track The Stars

Follow actors, directors and presenters to find out when they're next on.

Real-time Buzz

New series? Big news story? The hottest shows rise to the top.

Case Studies

  • >

    • Voila uses activity on site and social media data from Twitter to optimise RadioTimes.com in real time

Features

for Audiences Discover and keep track of favourite shows and personalities

  • Common-sense recommendations
  • Personalised schedules
  • On-demand watchlists
  • Personality tracking
  • Live buzz and most-popular charts
  • Social recommendations
  • Alerts (e.g., email, SMS, social networks)
  • Search
  • Classic EPGs
  • Works across TV, Radio and Film
  • Links to other on-demand platforms (e.g., iTunes, broadcasters)
  • Log in with social networks and existing accounts

for Platforms & Broadcasters Use existing product and platform data to extend user journeys, drive login and broaden usage

  • Tune editorial recommendations to individual tastes
  • Automatically optimise prominent parts of your product to meet commercial or public service objectives
  • Use data about your shows from Twitter and Facebook to improve experience
  • Use data on Facebook and Twitter about competitor’s shows and platforms to market your own content
  • Send alerts to reactivate audiences
  • Link between ondemand and live schedules
  • Aggregate content from multiple broadcasters

for Developers Zero-hassle Software as a Service, with a simple RESTful API

  • Delivered via simple RESTful API
  • Uses existing metadata feeds (including major international platforms, all major UK broadcasters and VOD platforms, via Atlas)
  • Provided on a managed SaaS basis, with rigorous SLAs
  • Tried and tested in existing major products
  • Designed for easy caching - calls can be customised to exclude uncachable components
  • Most calls return inside 100ms, allowing easy page assembly
  • Serious technology stack: Java, Hadoop, MongoDB, Linux
  • Hosted on Amazon Web Services for quick, effortless scaling

for Compliance Data ownership doesn't change. Works with existing T&Cs, everything is stored and processed in the EU

  • Hosted with Amazon Web Services, exclusively in EU data centres
  • No change of data ownership - we process data on your behalf
  • Full information security policy, approved by top UK broadcasters
  • Detailed disaster recovery plans
  • Fully insured
  • Software escrow available

About

MetaBroadcast was founded in 2007 around a vision of Simple Social Broadcasting - a realisation that online TV experiences can be enhanced by adding a social dimension. Since then we have learned a lot about the benefits and also the challenges of integrating Social Media and Broadcasting. "Social TV" is now en-vogue, and an integral part of our wider, more practical vision.

Voila is informed by our work on no less than six separate prototypes:

  • In 2008 we built the Social Media Guide, an internal prototype for the BBC
  • In 2009 we built Test Tube Telly, a public prototype for Channel 4, and Amplus, a public prototype for MetaBroadcast
  • In 2010 we built a series of MetaBroadcast experiments: Watch Something, Gawp, and VoteUp

This in-depth experience has taught us how to deliver simple, powerful features on top of todays' rich sources of data, including but not limited to social data

We have been fortunate to be working with the RadioTimes as the launch client for Voila.

MetaBroadcast services feed TV, Radio and Film data for the new RadioTimes site.

For more information about voila