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Social TV Won’t Be What You Think It Is… It’ll Be Better

Thursday, March 10th, 2011 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

TV Chat

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.

Posted in Content, Distribution, Ecosystem | Comment »

Do you watch a lot of TV by yourself? It may be hazardous to your health.

Monday, February 28th, 2011 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

Social Remote

In every which way, every experience in terms of how we connect with the outside world has been radically transformed over the last decade. Think of what a phone or a PC was, and what it could do, 20 years ago, and think of what it is now. Almost everyone has a mobile device or laptop with them, or near them, at all times. You’re always one chat request, status update or tweet away from connecting with virtually anyone, at any time.

So why should TV be frozen in time, essentially exactly the same as when people were watching Bewitched and eating TV dinners in 1966? For the great majority of Americans, it’s still the EXACT same experience. Many of these same people have tablets and smart phones, but the TV is, well, the TV. It’s got HD now, and it’s flat, but that’s about it. Why should TV be the world’s last solitary electronic experience?

MediaPost’s Wayne Friedman writes about this topic in his recent article, “Social Networking During Your Favorite TV Show — What If It Were Prescribed By Your Doctor?” He references studies that have found that loneliness (or rather, “social isolation”) is actually harmful to your health. If Wayne’s right, we could see a warning label on TVs soon: “This device can be harmful to your health and social standing unless it provides interactive content and social networking capabilities.”

Although the article has a healthy dose of sarcasm, Freidman’s got a point. Think about the times you watch TV by yourself. This often leads to hours on end of sitting on the couch, snacking on bad food. Too much of this and you, sir or madam, will become a fat loner sitting in a dark room, eating copious amounts of Snacky Smores, waiting listlessly for the next episode of NCIS to give some sort of meaning to your empty life.

“Pfffft!!” you say. “Watching video is something you do to zone out. It isn’t social at all.” Oh yeah? When’s the last time you went to the movie theater alone? OK, creepy guy in the back, put your hand down.

Fortunately these habits are starting to change. Younger people still want to watch TV, but they’re more likely to watch it on a laptop or mobile device, on their own schedule. And when they watch, they want to hit Facebook, Twitter, their blog, etc., to talk about it with friends and the world in general. This isn’t a conscious decision, really; it’s just how they watch TV. Bottom line, kids don’t view TV as a solitary experience anymore… AT ALL… even if they’re physically alone while they’re doing it.

The challenge is to integrate this social media into TV without detracting—or distracting—from the core video entertainment that TV provides. Hey…I didn’t say it was going to be easy. In my next post, I’ll discuss just how that should be done. I now release you to the wilds of the internet. Run free!

Posted in Distribution, Ecosystem | Comment »

Your Connected TV Is Not Secure!

Friday, February 18th, 2011 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

TV Virus Alert

We live in amped-up times that require excessive hyperbole. So, with that in mind:

YOUR CONNECTED TV PRODUCT IS AT RISK OF CATCHING A DEBILITATING VIRUS!

OK, reality check: We haven’t heard any true stories of infected connected TVs. Yet.

But the point is legit: If you’re downloading stuff from the Internet to a device in your home, it’s only a matter of time before some enterprising hacker will look to mess with that device.

As connected TVs and related connected TV set-top boxes reach critical mass in our homes, you’d best believe that hackers will view them exactly as they’ve viewed PCs for decades: as awesome platform for potential mischief and mayhem.

Or worse. You realize, too, that you’ll be entering personal information on these devices from time to time? The bad guys will realize that too.

Security! Privacy! ID theft! Viruses! Info-terrorism! It’s all coming to a TV near you! And when you plunked down a bundle on your connected TV at your big box retailer, who warned you that you were at risk? Nobody!

“But I just want to watch TV and play around with some cool apps and enjoy some Web video,” you say. “And now I need to worry about THIS?” “I know, I know,” I coo in response.(Note: I am a world-class coo-er.)

There’s no need to be too worried just yet. Like I said, there’s no evidence that TVs are being hacked. Again: Yet.

Ocean Blue Software is looking to embed its firewall software on connected TV products. If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that putting software and other resource-intensive stuff on these devices is a pet peeve of mine. I believe your “smart” TV should have virtually no intelligence on-board, and instead stream that intelligence from the cloud. It’s cheaper, it’s more efficient, it futureproofs your device and… it’s more secure.

Lo and behold, Ocean Blue Software agrees with me! As the article states: “Ultimately, connected software for TV set-top boxes and connected TVs with new cloud-based anti-virus offerings may be the best solution, the company said.”

So here’s a company looking to build a business embedding software on tens of millions of devices saying that, “ultimately,” in a perfect world, they wouldn’t be putting their software on those devices at all.

So yeah: I think this cloud-based connected TV idea I’ve been pushing makes sense, don’t you? Just remember, you heard it here first!

Posted in Content, Ecosystem | Comment »

I’m with Veruca on this One

Thursday, February 10th, 2011 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

Veruca Salt

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.

Posted in Content, Distribution, Ecosystem | 1 Comment »

Harnessing the Cloud to Conquer Nature

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

Jack's Remote

Cablevision’s DVR Plus service — which is now rolling out — is the latest example of how the cloud can deliver digital services that consumers want.

Just think: For the first time, it’s goodbye to residence-based, hard drive-heavy DVR set-top boxes, and hello to lightweight, cloud-driven DVR.

Now, one might argue that with memory and storage following Moore’s Law, DVRs are becoming cheaper every day. So why not continue to develop and deploy bulked-up set-top boxes? Or, more to the point, why bother going to the cloud for DVR?

The fact is that even with cheaper memory and storage available with every passing day, the cloud-as-content-repository is still the less expensive way to go. Operators can deploy less expensive equipment, and have fewer truck rolls and service calls because there are fewer things that can go wrong in the subscriber’s home.

But the real winner here is the consumer. DVR full? Trying to record too many shows at once? As cloud-based DVR technology (also known as “network DVR”) matures, those are likely to become non-issues. And if your power goes out (I’m looking at you, East Coast blizzard people), your cloud-based DVR is likely to continue recording your scheduled queue even while you’re in the dark.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t need the sound of a hard drive whirring and crunching away to give me comfort. So give it your best shot Mother Nature; freeze the doors shut on my car, make me resort to eating that old can of tuna in the back of the pantry, drive me to the brink of insanity like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, because when the power comes back on, that episode of American Idol will be waiting to give me comfort and laughter.