[July 19, 2017]

TokBox Social Media Real-Time Communications Study Finds RTC "Gone Global"

TokBox, the real-time communications (RTC) company, today announced its first Social Media RTC Study, which evaluated social media applications that use the OpenTok platform from October 2016 - May 2017.

"Given that we evaluated the use of video chat on social media applications, it's not surprising that we see a primary usage of 'communitainment,' with a majority of users making video calls after work or school hours and on the weekends," said TokBox (News - Alert) CEO Scott Lomond. "What did surprise us, however, was how global in nature the use of WebRTC has become on social media. Over a dozen countries represented in one video chat. Usage timelines that vary significantly by geographical region. There are clear indicators that WebRTC provides a unique platform to connect people around the world."

Findings from the social media video chat study include:

One-to-One Communications (News - Alert)

• Video communications happened primarily on weekends and were short in duration (under one minute).
• The top 3 geographies that are the most frequent users of social video calls (in number of one-on-one sessions per user) are North America, Oceania and Western Europe. The least frequent users are from Southeast Asia, East Asia and Eastern Europe.
• Acording to Lomond: "Globally, we see a lot of one-to-one calls that are short, quick calls, which could be as simple as people making plans."

• A majority of one-to-many video calls, where one user streams video to many users, were made on the weekend.
• The top 3 geographies for frequence of one-to-many calls include Central Asia, the Middle East and India. The least frequent users are from Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America.
• Added Lomond: "Social media is clearly a place where people look to broadcast content, and we don't anticipate that to change any time soon."

Many-to-Many Communications

• Group chat was most popular on Mondays.
• The largest number of countries present on one call was 13.
• The highest frequency users were found in the Middle East, Western Europe and Africa, while the lowest 3 geographies using group chat were Oceania, East Asia and Southeast Asia.
• Lomond concluded: "The idea that a group chat on a social media application includes people in 13 countries is a significant indicator of the unique ability of real-time communications to connect people around the world in new ways."

The study also found that Middle East participants chat for the longest into the night with peak call times lasting until 3 am local time, whereas U.S. users start and finish earlier, with calls peaking from 2 pm to 10 pm local time.

PII data was not collected.

To find out more, please visit https://tokbox.com/blog/welcome-to-the-world-of-social-video-chat/.

About TokBox

TokBox, a Telefónica (News - Alert) company, develops and operates the OpenTok Platform, making it fast and easy to add live video communications into online and mobile websites, apps and services. The scalable, customizable platform gives users the creative freedom to develop any video interaction, from one-to-one chats to large-scale broadcasts.

The first platform to incorporate support for WebRTC, OpenTok caters to enterprises, entrepreneurs and developers with powerful APIs and a global cloud infrastructure. OpenTok has been used to stream WebRTC live video in over 36,000 applications since 2013. Companies including Mozilla (News - Alert), Major League Baseball, Esurance, Royal Bank of Scotland, Valspar, Bridgestone Golf, and Double Robotics. www.tokbox.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170719005428/en/

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