SAN FRANCISCO — One of the social TV space’s most talked-about apps has apparently succeeded in driving up its user base after recently renaming and rebranding.
“Traffic is up 25% to 30% month-on-month, so it’s going very well,” says Beamly co-founder Anthony Rose, who in April rebranded Zeebox, the service he launched in 2011, to be more female-friendly and to better support on-demand viewing.
“People perceived us not as a participation app but as a newfangled social TV guide,” Rose tells Beet.TV. “We wanted a more viral, social experience; it was a male, geeky experience.”
Beamly investors incude Comcast and BSkyB. “Our audience is now 65% female,” says Rose, who previously steered the popularization of the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up TV service. “That audience is a lot less interested in things ike ACR (automatic content recognition) and remote control – they want to talk ahbout the Kardsashians and they want to involve their friends.”
We spoke with him at the TV of Tomorrow conference. You can find more videos of our coverage here.