Still watching the TV?
October 1st, 2009 by aymanReally, does anyone actually care to watch the TV anymore? The latest influx of TV becoming social is bringing a variety of apps and funky visualizations. Take in point the MTV VMA. Why attend & watch when you can tweet? Presumably in the breaks when we were fetching a drink or trying not to spill the sour cream of a crisp. Couple this with iJustine and a soda pop like viz of people and well:
VMA Viz
This lets people (including iJustine the hostess) pick people floating up and see terms-live. I would have liked to see this filtered using Eigenvector Centrality; one could find the salient people in the conversation easily.
But, if you are like Naaman, you are probably either talking about yourself or want to hear what people are broadcasting. Got an app for that? Well Frog kinda does, its called tvChatter (coming soon):
You don’t have to configure your favorite tweet app with filters for # tags. Just find the show and follow the tweets, or tweet away! As people chatting about tv media becomes more and more real time, it actually shapes and changes what we know about people using Twitter (remember when it was a social microblogging platform like what two years ago?).
So is this all becoming that all too intrusive computer interface for ‘learning about artwork’ that they give you on a hand held when you probably should just be looking at the painting? Or is everyone happy typing while watching? Naaman? You get a TV yet with actual channels?
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:25 am
Hey Ayman, didn’t you hear? I’m an informer now. And I have channels but no TV.
I like these trends. Headline: “TV to bring back community!”.
Also, Twitter, the nation craves groups. Dynamic, effective, group mechanisms for Twitter.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:33 am
@infomor vs. @mor this Sunday at the New Jersey Shoreline! Be there and be sure to tweet your reactions!
October 2nd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
There are certain types of tv programs that work very well with an interactive platform- Katz and Dayan’s “media events,” but also televised sports. Watch the #mlb tag on Twitter during the baseball playoffs for this in action!
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:20 pm
Maybe it’s because I’ve just watched three episodes of Mad Men – via Netlix – that I felt the tvChatter video was selling me WAY to hard, which just made me question what they were selling in the first place. TV is dying, and it’s not going to get any better – though the sports events from EG-G is a good point. We’re an All-American family over here with 2.x of kids and we don’t have cable TV. We haven’t had it for about four months and don’t miss it all. We either watch shows on the computer, through AppleTV/Boxee or DVDs from Netflix.
October 3rd, 2009 at 11:17 am
I didn’t put 2 & 2 together here – I think that the tvChatter would be WAY cool if it had an ability to encourage people to have “view ups” where they could watch a pre-recorded video at the same time and run comments with the tvChatter. Maybe there could be a syncing feature, and others could come in later and hop right to it. I think this could develop a more together-while-alone scene – maybe this is what Mor was saying with dynamic and effective groups?
ALSO, Boxee does something like this with their social networking feature that encourages discussion around TV/movies. They also have infiltrated Facebook with an app for photo sharing. AND, Hulu has a Facebook app, that’s kind of like tvChatter, but more computer oriented, versus mobile.
Now lets get to The Shore – it’s beautiful out!
October 6th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Thanks for the mention.
Frank, the app is optimized for the primetime airing of a show. Our research shows that a majority of US TV watchers watch live TV and cable broadcasts. The app also has high value while watching a show time-shifted or recorded, like yourself. You can watch a show via AppleTV/Boxee, Hulu, or Netflix and coordinate the viewing with the people you follow on Twitter. Turn on the friend filter in tvChatter and you now have a tvChatter viewing party.
- Yoel, tvChatter Product Manager
October 6th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Yoel – LOL! – EVERYONE’S reading The Ayman and Naaman Show! If you got the data on TV watchers I won’t debate it – I’ve always been a bit of an outlier, so that might explain my view. Glad to hear about the non-live abilities. As I said – that’s WAY cool! If you have a mailing list, put me on it, because I would like to check it out when it hits the App Store. Again, I think this could be a powerful group mechanism as Mor was asking for in an earlier post.
Thanks!
October 6th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Frank, we’ll let the world know about our status in the store via twitter. Please follow us at http://www.twitter.com/tvchatterapp
Thanks,
Yoel
October 16th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
tvChatter is available on the app store now. Wahoo!
November 27th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
[...] I don’t actually read the Huffington Post all too often. Usually, I follow it and other reporting agencies like it through social network streams like Facebook or Twitter. If you know me already, you know I have issues the use of the term social there, but it’s time we paid it some due attention. Social streams let us know what our friends want to share (and converse with us…yes Naaman, I still say social media is about conversation). Additionally, we can also follow trusted sources, celebrities, or agencies we want specific news from. I personally enjoy this filtration, which accounts for probably 40% of my news consumption; the rest comes from TV and general news (paper or web) reading/viewing. TV and videos themselves are highly social activities—weather we watch them together or just ask our friends if they saw it later. This is what lead me to create Zync for Yahoo! Messenger and what leads others to create similar technologies. [...]