More thoughts on Miso as a SecondScreen Experience

I got asked to take a second look at Miso via the iPhone app (instead of the iPad) and to watch an episode of Dexter to review the synchronized content experience.  Here are my comments on this "Stimulating" feature:

- I would have expected some form of synchronization capability so that I could hit pause or rewind.  It was a fully manual experience (once the episode started, I hit a "play" button to start the synchronized second screen experience on my iPhone).

- I only received information on the screen about every 3-4 minutes.  In fact, the first item I received was around 3.5 minutes into the show--I actually thought the app was broken since nothing came up other than the cover image.  I would have expected something every 30-45 seconds.

- The information was relevant (IMDB-type stuff), but not overly interesting.  It seemed to me on this episode (SE5E1) that they put in an event every 2-3 minutes without a ton of thought into what would keep the consumer captivated.  While I was not a huge fan of the TVplus experience (see previous blog), the synchronized content in the TVplus experience was interesting and relevant (the background music, interesting facts, etc).

- Finally, there is no indication on this title that there is some special feature (synchronized content) associated with it.  Similar to other apps where the seeded content is still relatively low volume, I would have expected some special mark, sticker, comments, asterisk--something to denote there was a special experience for Dexter that I should try out.

While this mildly improves the Stimulating from None to Low (on the iPhone implementation) and is a foreshadowing of the potential, I don't think it is enough to get anyone excited today.  Let's hope they put that $4m to good use quickly.

Summary:
- Simple.  None.
- Social.  Medium.
- Seamless.  None.
- Stimulating.  Low. (slight improvement for certain iPhone content)
- Discovery.  Medium.