Way back in 2004 we built a Plot Predictor for Talkback Thames’ hit reality show The Apprentice. In late 2008 we got together again and dreamt up an entirely new idea. This time round, we wanted to make a live online game which would allow users to watch the show on TV or iPlayer live whilst playing and talking-along in realtime.
The aim was to enhance the live viewing experience and create a two-way conversation between the show and the online audience. So along with the game, a fun hosted discussion was part of the app.
With very little time we decided not to add more social functionality such as playing with friends, saving scores week-to-week or playing on-demand. Instead we focussed on a simple game concept; pick who you think will get fired, and for as long as you hold them, you’ll accumulate potential points with that candidate. You can change your mind at any time during the show, but you’ll only win the points accumulated on the candidate who actually gets fired.
We’ve been building realtime apps for a long time, and our EnMasse realtime communication platform has been in heavy use at the BBC for several years (Mia Cavaver, Quizoo, Gut Instinct, Football Player Ratings).
The big question was “how many people will do this and can our existing EnMasse cluster handle the load?”.
This was the perfect opportunity to put some recent R&D into action – EnMasse running on Amazon’s Cloud Computing platform EC2. The reason for using EC2 was that we had no idea what volumes we needed to cater for. So EC2 allows us to run as many virtual server instances as we like for little additional cost. The costly alternative would be to setup and deploy hardware that may not be needed.
The result was a resounding success. As it turns out, we needed a lot of the capacity, and with some tweaking both EnMasse and EC2 worked together harmoniously. Since then we’ve used EC2 for a variety of other projects such as Burberry Live at London Fashion Week.
The Predictor re-ignited interest in live participation across the board, and kick-started a wave of ‘Social TV’ experiments. There are many things we will do differently next time, but it proved that the experience is fun and incredibly valuable its users.
Quotes
Seetha Kumar
BBC Online Controller
"a good example of how social functionality can add interest and drama to our best-loved shows"
