If social TV is really going to take off, it’s all about adding to the core TV experience, and not just putting social websites on TV. This is one of those deals where the parts are greater than the sum. By stripping social TV apart, integrating it with an excellent navigation system, and pairing it with the cloud as an intelligence source, we can create new social experiences that we haven’t yet seen on a PC or other device.

What kinds of experiences? Well, I’m glad you asked. You’re a good egg. Here are a couple:

Impulse recommendations: On a PC, you often put a recommendation in your video queue for watching later on your TV. Even interactions with friends are usually not in real time because the nature of PC—and even mobile—usage is entirely different for everyone. But even with the advent of DVRs, people tend to watch TV at around the same time. It’s inherently social, which makes it kinda weird that it’s the last medium to join the “social” revolution.

This means significant changes to how recommendation engines work. What are you watching right now, and how might that affect what you want to watch next? What are your friends watching and chatting about right now (assuming all interested parties have opted in, of course)? Throw in Smart TV apps, and all of a sudden, it’s not just “what are your friends watching”, but “what are they doing”…browsing an ad showcase and taking advantage of a limited time offer, playing a game of poker that you may want to join, etc.

Your TV viewing habits can influence your PC and mobile viewing: This one is really cool. Your “big” TV experience can influence your “small” (PC) TV experience. When your viewing history is plugged into the cloud, you begin to develop a portable profile that learns from your behavior. Ever wonder why Netflix’s recommendations aren’t always for stuff you’d like to watch? Imagine if Netflix knew what your actual viewing behavior was, instead of trying to predict it based on some algorithm. Netflix would love that, and you probably would too.

Imagine your YouTube queue automatically delivering you content based on what you were channel-surfing the day earlier. Imagine playing a game that’s embedded in an ad showcase and winning a killer coupon, and when you go to shop online, it’s already been applied to your shopping cart.

Notice how all of this stuff is way more “lean back” than “lean forward”? Notice how little if any on-screen typing you’d be doing? Marry the cloud to social TV, deliver an awesome and easy-to-use interface (let’s call it “iVOD”), and this whole category gets way more interesting.

Give consumers what they want. Like Veruca Salt says, “I want the works. I want the whole works…Don’t care how. I want it now.”

Want to search for a specific piece of content? Make it quick and easy.

Prefer to have HAL recommend something to you? Make sure he doesn’t say, “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Want to just mindlessly surf through an endless stream of entertainment? It should be no more than a click away.

Everyone wants apps everywhere these days, and we’re definitely in agreement there. But let’s remember that delivering apps on a smartphone comes with a far different set of requirements than delivering apps on a living room TV. Apps on mobile devices—even mobile devices as attractive as tablets—are very active lean-forward experiences (‘cause you can’t see ‘em if you lean back).

We’ve yet to experience the full value of TV apps, though. By that I mean that we haven’t experienced them to their full lean-back potential.

Users clearly want to maintain an element of “vegging out” when it comes to TV viewing on the couch. They don’t want to be tied to a keyboard; for many, that’s what they did all day at work. Cord-cutting is a hot issue right now, but a recent study suggested that most of the participants saw “TV as a random, no-thought experience, and unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, online video offerings are unsatisfying experiences.”

The challenge for most viewers is combining active search for apps and content with more passive discovery that can help them wind down from a busy day. As GigaOM recently wrote, “What might be more important in the long term is not the availability of alternative content over-the-top, but the placement of that content, via apps on the TV, alongside cable apps.”

We’ve been working on a user interface that delivers just that kind of experience. Check it out here.

Now, GigaOM also seems to think that because the new TV experience will incorporate apps from many different sources, that CE manufacturers will usurp cable’s place as media kingpin. Well, I think that’s quite a leap. Both managed network operators (cable/satellite/telco) and CE manufacturers are mindful of their core competencies, and the operators—as providers of premium content—will hold a prominent place in any fully-realized TV platform.