Is the Social Television Experience Similar to the Social Online Video Experience? Extending Domain-Specific Sociability Heuristics to a New Domain

Online social video applications, combining video watching with social media, are gaining in popularity. However, evaluation tools that focus on optimally supporting social interaction (i.e. sociability) when designing social video applications are still lacking. We have created a list of sociability heuristics for social interactive television applications, but it is unsure if these can be applied to similar applications but on a different platform, the web. In this position paper, we discuss the possibilities and limitations of applying sociability heuristics in a new – but related – domain, and we highlight opportunities for future work in this area.