Bridging the gap between social, traditional media

Santhosh Subramanian, co-founder of Potatolive, tells us, “The game plan involves tapping into existing social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) or through custom mobile apps. The engagements are designed after studying the needs of the media outlet, whether it’s producing television programmes or publishing magazines.” 

He says, “We had participated in a prototyping event a few years ago at The Startup Centre. We created a web-based software to connect with friends from different locations while watching a live event (like IPL) with an overlay for chatting. It didn’t quite take off that time. But we kept iterating and found it had use in TV. It was an interesting experiment for us. Next time, it worked for a TV channel and increased their audience engagement.” The team strives to incorporate inputs from social media on traditional media. 

He elaborates, “Imagine a live contest on a TV channel. When you login to its social media page, there will be discussions around the contest. Potatolive just captures that discussion and presents it live on the TV channel. This live engagement proved to be a big advantage for TV programmes since social/ digital media is always seen as a distraction or a competition to the traditional media. But now we are turning the concept on its head and making it co-exist. In a similar way, we are identifying the apt level of engagement for specific media and suggesting unique solutions, be it augmented reality, virtual reality, mobile games and apps.” Santhosh believes that the biggest investment is his crew. He says, “We are a six-member team. We have just hired our first employee. Since we started it as a service, we have bootstrapped this from the start depending only on revenues.” 

Their recent venture, a fantasy league portal 234seats.in, launched during the TN assembly elections was an instant hit.