MTV Under the Thumb: A Social TV App Takes Europe

Close to 50 years ago, the British musical scene invaded America. Now an American music icon is seeing what kind of cultural damage it can do across the pond.

In an effort to maintain its coolness with teen consumers, MTV has launched a new mobile app called MTV Under The Thumb that “allows users to watch MTV on-demand content simultaneously with friends and chat about it in the app at the same time,” according to Econsultancy.com.

As unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the co-viewing app launches this month in seven European countries  for Android and iPhone users. Users can also use their smartphones as a remote control and watch the content in a Web browser on a computer, the site notes, as well as share their favorite shows via Facebook.

The entry-level app offers different levels of access.

The basic level offers free (meaning ad-supported) “Tiny Thumbs” access, which shares celeb news, MTV highlights, and limited episodes.

A subscription tier, dubbed “Super Thumb,” gives users extra TV programming for €2.99 ($4) per month or €29.99 ($40.34) a year.

It can also be bundled in an MTV Mobile contract, if all of that isn’t enough for MTV fans in Europe. The all-access “Ultra Thumb” level “gives users who have an MTV Mobile handset contract free access to all shows,” and the full array of the MTV mobile viewing experience.

The social content app offers a huge opportunity to expand its mobile base beyond the current pool of 2.7 million users in Europe for MTV-branded mobile (MVNO) products, as Econsultancy reports. It also represents a "step up" from MTV's WatchWith mobile app in the U.S.

Video may have killed the radio star, but it remains unclear what kind of damage a social-network-TV star can do.