Have Sky bought into a social white elephant?

There was much attention to a deal that Sky did earlier this month where they picked up 10% of Zeebox, a company that builds 'social TV' apps that users interact with as a 'second screen' to comment on TV programmes that they are watching at the same time.

A big partner launch was undertaken alongside the E4 programme Desperate Scousewives, but stats have revealed that there was very little use of Zeebox indeed to comment on the show via Twitter.

Of 80,000 tweets sent by Twitter users during the series only 100 of them came from the Zeebox platform according to unofficial data that Broadcast has obtained - although to be fair Zeebox's co-founder challenged the data in saying that not all updates included a reference to their client software.

The data raises questions as to whether Sky have bought into a social white elephant, perhaps repeating a pattern of poor investments in Internet firms from their part parent company News Corporation.