Second Screening with the Oscars after the Red Carpet

I had hoped the day after the Oscars, like with the Super Bowl and the Grammys, would be characterized by record breaking statistics.  I even checked the data several times through out the day to see if any data was forthcoming.  It seems neither Trendrr nor BlueFin labs reported anything on big ground breaking stats today.

I thought Lost Remote did a great job summarizing their experience yesterday.  Not surprisingly, mine was very similar.  After finishing my mini-focus group with the neighbors, I headed to a quiet living room where I could test Umami's new features, give Viggle and ConnecTV another go, test the (now) classics of BuddyTV, Yap.TV and TVplus, and see if the much marketed change in IntoNow would stack up.  I have to admit, similar to my red carpet experience and despite the apps continuously crashing, I kept coming back to the official ABC Oscar app because it had unique content (the multiple and selectable camera angles).

First things first, like I said in my previous blog, I liked the concepts in the ABC official Oscars app, I just hated the poor app quality.  I voted 3 different times before the votes actually 'saved' in the app.  It crashed continually.  It had poor Social features.  But the exclusive and selectable camera angles made me keep coming back.




Umami had some interesting new features to crow about.  The trending Twitter indication was interesting (but for consumers, probably less so).  The Freeze Frame app was a cool way to share content (though I suspect as yet unapproved by content creators).  Essentially, you hit a button and the magic server in the cloud snaps a picture (I am assuming this only works for live TV and not even time shifted east coast / west coast TV).  If you could get the photo right, it was pretty cool.

I still love TVplus's implementation of synchronized content events.  They have the right mix of timing and variety.  I just wish they made more effective use of the middle third of the screen (from a UI perspective, not so great).  The sync-ing worked great every time I tried it and I enjoyed seeing what they had to say.

I still don't get Viggle.  I know they are well-funded, but as a consumer, I am still struggling.  The app let you play along with a trivia question every 45 seconds, and you earned points for playing.  Why?  If the advertiser needs to know I am connected, aren't their more passive ways to do that?  Seems like a waste of consumer engagement (not to be taken lightly).  While it was cool seeing what others picked and if I was right or wrong, I still ask, WHY?

ConnecTV?  It did better.  The room was VERY quiet and the audio sync'd successfully 3 of 4 attempts.  It was the first time the "synchronized" content did not appear random (though based on some DVR pauses, I don't think it was synchronized but just tied to the current real-time moment).  I still don't like the advertising engagement (not in synch with the TV) or the use of real state from a UI perspective.



IntoNow surprised me by having a relatively cool feature.  They showed recent photos of the red carpet and the Oscars and asked for a like or no-like, and then shared the rating of other users with you.  Very much the "Social Networking Hot or Not" example from the movie.  I actually think their Twitter feed implementation is better, though still needs curation and time-syncing.  The massive real-estate to display who else is using the app seems odd at best.

 Yap.tv hasn't changed much.  Very much the social-only app, but I have to say that having the Twitter feed literally fly by is not a great experience.







Miso?  No comment.

My conclusion: 1st party apps (ABC Oscars) are falling prey to the standard development pitfalls.  I think there is a better strategy here for content creators/distributors to give the Stimulating content to a few trusted (and well implemented) consumer apps that can aggregate traffic to support their brand rather than botching up the experience themselves.

I also think the existence of so many attempts is indicative of one more thing: whether mass market yet or not, the networks and advertisers THINK the market is ready for them.

Second Screen App "Shoot-out"

As many of you already know, we are holding a 1-day conference next week at the Loews in Santa Monica (Feb 22) with two parallel tracks: one on Second Screen and one on Social TV.

We are planning to run a 2nd screen app "shoot-out" around lunch time.  Essentially, we are going to take the audience through a three-minute tour of each of 10 Second Screen TV apps where in the 1st minute we walk through a series of use cases for the consumer on a scripted TV show, in the 2nd minute we perform similar tasks on a live / reality TV show, and then give the app developers a chance to show off the features they believe differentiate themselves in the 3rd minute.

Then we'll let the conference audience vote using Twitter hash tags and combine that feedback with the views of a small panel of "expert" judges (50/50).

Finally, we'll award the winners in 6 categories at the end of the conference day (just before cocktails):

1. Best in Simple (ability to control the first screen)
2. Best in Social (ability to interact with others via Twitter, Facebook, live chat, etc)
3. Best in Seamless (ability to provide multiple sources for viewing content)
4. Best in Stimulating (ability to provide the consumer with interesting and relevant content during their viewing experience)
5. Best in Discovery (ability to provide the consumer with recommendations on other content he/she may be interested in)
6. Best Overall 2nd Screen Experience

Here are the list of apps we plan to review next Wednesday:

1. BuddyTV
2. TVplus
3. Fanhattan
4. ConnecTV
5. Dijit
6. Viggle
7. Umami
8. Miso
9. yap.TV
10. IntoNow

Visit www.2ndscreensummit.com to reserve your place in the conference and get a chance to vote on your favorite apps.  See you on Wednesday in Santa Monica.

Watching a DVR'd episode of SVU with Second Screen

Are you as curious as I am about how the Second Screen apps stack up when it's not live?  Do they spoil the ending (Grammy app killed me)?  Do they curate Tweets in time with features?  Do they even work at all?

I started with Umami, mostly because I haven't used the app for awhile and was looking for improvements.  I still like the interface, relatively decent ACR (took 10-15 seconds, struggled at first), and think it has a good balance of both Stimulating and Social features (no Simple, very little Seamless, and no Discovery).  Apart from crashing 3 or 4 times, the app did well on what I was expecting in the Stimulating and Social elements.  One important thing to note:  I am watching a 1-week old show and the ACR works find (except in commercials).  It also delivers the tweets based on the show timecodes--so no spoliers!  Even though I must be a small minority watching the show a week late, there were tweets which I know had been shared a week ago as other apps (as I jumped around) had them their with their real world time code delivery (date and time that is).

I quickly tried IntoNow (since the recent feature improvements are enticing).  I do like their Twitter integration and the ACR worked well, but you can see here that it is real-world timed (meaning spoliers).  I swapped to Yap.tv--no ACR (you choose the show), but good social implementation--except all real-world timed, so again spoilers.

No images for TVplus (current favorite list).  It did not pick up the ACR and you can't really "tune" the app without it (unfortunately).  But ConnecTV did work.  Recognized the right episode, but starting showing those sort of random facts that appear to be synchronized with the content but aren't.  You noticed this when they start repeating.

Summary:  I think Umami did a good job of managing a DVR'd experience.  If you think there are other apps that perform similarly (recognizing what you are watching and timing the updates of Tweets, relevant content to the current episode you are watching), please let me know.  If you believe the majority of consumers watch time-shifted content, this is a must for them (though clearly the networks want to push all of us to watch live).

A Second Screen premier party for The River with Umami, ConnecTV, TVplus and Yap.tv

ABC did a good job of carpet bombing every advertising outlet this week for the premier of "The River", including invading my Twitter feed.  A number of Second Screen apps promoted their pending activity for the premier as well, so I had a little party with four of them: UmamiTV, ConnecTV, TVplus and Yap.TV.  I tried to create a scenario to walk thru for a consistent review of each app (though brief).

Simple.  None of them had any capability to control the first screen.  3 of them used audio ACR to recognize what you were watching, while Yap.TV showed you a list of thumb nails of popular shows there were currently airing for you to select.

Social.  I was surprised at little activity there seemed to be tonight on such a highly marketed premier.  I started with Umami and opened the Twitter feed.  While curated (which I like), it was not time-coded (ie designed to match the timecode of the feature)--so the East Coast spoiled the show's ending for me 30 seconds into it.  ConnecTV had the official show Tweets showing, but since my friends aren't my friends in this app, I had no friend tweets/chats showing.  Yap.tv had light traffic on it's chat section and did not curate the Tweets, so they flew by on the app (also spoilers).  The "Poll" section was empty.  TVplus has the best implementation tonight (which surprised me), with fan tweets on one side of the screen and show tweets on the other.  They seemed to be semi-curated, but oddly enough the right-hand bottom corner reserved for current tweets was empty the whole show.

Seamless.  None of the apps had any method to incorporate multiple sources of content (all relied on live TV guides).

Stimulating.  I was looking for some of the basics (the cast, access to things like IMDB or Wikipedia) as well as advanced features like synchronized content.  ConnecTV had no cast or links to IMDB or Wikipedia.  Yap.TV had no cast or access to simple metadata sites, but did curiously have some random cast photos.  Umami had both native cast information and access to IMDB and Wikipedia (and ABC and Google).  TVplus had no basic cast information, but did have links to Wikipedia and IMDB. It got a little more interesting on the synchronized content front.  Yap.TV and Umami had no synchronized experiences.  ConnecTV did have changing content, but I don't think it was synchronized to anything.  In fact, the ConnecTV content kept showing facts about the cast constantly (in seeming random order and timing).  TVplus had by far the best synchronized experience, showing various factoids, polls, cast information, etc, about the show, but only about every 45 seconds, so it wasn't distracting.  The content was also clearly curated and relevant.

Discovery.  None of the apps had any discovery features.

I think I was probably most satisfied with my Umami experience for the basic Social and Stimulating features (despite the spoiling) and TVplus for the synchronized content experience.  Overall, not an impressive night though.  I am guessing the 4 apps were well prepared for the premier but either did not have access to the information before the show aired to make the experience more engaging or didn't have the staff on hand to do so in real-time.

It is early days.  We have a long ways to go.

Umami's curated (not timecoded) Twitter feed

ConnecTV's Changing but not synchronized content exp. (w/ ad)

A follow-on summary of the Second Screen apps reviewed so far

As expected, CES did turn out a few new apps and a few apps updated themselves, providing their consumers a better user experience (and rating in the process).

The summary conclusion is that Fanhattan and BuddyTV are now joined by M-Go and Dijit in the front running pack.  MediaEcho, Zeebox, IntoNow, GetGlue and TVplus create a second pack.  SOA Gear, Clicker, Rovi, Umami, Viggle, TV Dinner, Yap.TV, BravoNow and USAAnywhere make up a 3rd pack.

So, enjoy the current score card and check out the list below the graphic to see which apps are still to come, and plan on joining us in Santa Monica at the Second Screen Summit on February 22nd to discuss the business models, consumer experiences, and metadata that surrounds this exploding segment of the media industry.

A quick reminder about the methodology behind the ratings below: 

• Because I still haven't reviewed all of the apps yet or even all of the apps in a particular category (network operators, sports, blu-ray title specific, network specific, Discovery, Social, Simple, etc), I thought it best just to show the scores as they have been published so far, ranking them by the total score of the five categories.  
• I left the sports apps out since they all performed a very specific niche function in the Stimulating category but did little else.  
• Keep in mind that some of these apps are in beta or are otherwise not yet fully available to the public, so are subject to change (and improvement).  See the individual blog entries for more details.
• In the chart, black represents "none", red represents "low", yellow represents "medium" and green represents "high".

The 50+ apps yet to be reviewed: 

Bambi, Bones, Channer, DirecTV, Discovery, DStv Guide, Fanvibe, FIOS on Demand, Flingo, Grey's Anatomy, HashTV, HBO Go, HotPotato, i.TV, IMDB, KickFour, King's Speech, Leanin, Lion King, MyVideoSync, NBC Live, Numote, NyooTV, Pirates of Carribean, Playup, Pocket BigBrother, Screach, ScreenTribe, Shazam, Showtime Social, Smurf-o-vision, SocialGuide, Starling, Tapcast.TV, TV Chatter, TV Foundry, TV Tune-In, TV.com, TVChaser, TVCube, TVFriend, TVmoment, TvTak, VideoLive, Vloop, WatchParty, Wizzchat, XFINITY TV, Youtoo, Zap2It

Test Driving SecondScreen for Sports and Celebrity Entertainment Last Sunday

As I said in my previous post, I wanted to test drive some of the SecondScreen applications "in the field" with some good friends as we gathered around the large screen TV watching the Packers break our hearts during the NFL Playoffs and various actresses melt them as they took awards at Golden Globe Awards.

I started with DirecTV (will blog about the full experience soon) since my neighbor had it and loved their service.  He considers himself technically adept and after we downloaded the app, was surprised he had never heard of it (marketing problem again) because he instantly loved ALL of the features, especially the streaming within the home that he had just spent considerable time finding an alternate solution for.  While the app was very good for finding out which game was on and could tune the TV for you (very Simple though we had some trouble with that function),

it wasn't nearly as engaging graphically or with statistics as the NFL '11 app was.  Surprisingly, the ConnecTV app (just launched at CES), was a pretty engaging (Stimulating) as a Second Screen sports experience.

All of them were relatively limited in their Social ability.  ConnecTV was probably the most advanced with a decent "show" Twitter feed. None of them recognized your friends in Facebook as your friends in their app (despite asking for the credentials--arrgghh).

Finally, all of them also fell short on the Seamless and Discovery features.  So, hats off to NFL'11 for having great play-by-play graphics, stats, and information about the team and congrats to ConnecTV for coming out of the gate with a decent sports experience.









So then we moved on after our bitter defeat to the girls' favorite of the evening - the Golden Globe Awards.  I tried in vain to find a dedicated app (there was one last year for the Oscars that was pretty intense) and was even more frustrated when I found the E! On the Red Carpet app after the red carpet had ended (would have been good to test it).  This time I bounced around with my friends on the yap.TV app and ConnecTV.  I did briefly try to bounce into tvplus (really struggled to use it's ACR to recognize the show, which did nothing for us when it was successful), Umami (also an audio sync up-front requirement that was disappointing for all the "shhh-ing" going on), and Miso (I had forgotten you could only check-in and see what other shows are trending).

Here, the ConnecTV experience was pretty poor.  I think they had put all their effort into the playoffs and had left the awards show alone.  There was limited Stimulating Content (thought the syncing worked relatively effortlessly) and it kept repeating a stream of 5-7 factoids that had nothing to do with what was on the screen at the time (even the news links seemed canned and a week old).

 You'll notice the tweets on the right hand side had nothing to do with the show (shameless promoting to someone who had clearly already downloaded the app) and the "What's trending" was great if you were bored and wanted to know what everyone else was watching.  They did manage to squeeze an add in (not seen very often YET) in a relatively unobtrusive manner.






yap.TV was much better for the Twitter integration (capturing what looked to be a semi-curated feed on the show in general) and allowing you to toggle back and forth between a "out in the wild" Twitter feed and the official GoldenGlobes feed (which allowed you to see exactly who won what without any clutter).

 Unfortunately, that is where it ended for yap.TV.  The polls section was left relatively untouched during the show and they did not offer much else except for a very glitzy opening image.

When I finally got Umami working, it did have an interesting Wikipedia link, but then again the rest of the app did fall extremely short.

None of the apps had anything in the way of Simple, Seamless or Discovery.  Stimulating was relatively weak considering what could have been presented.

So my take-aways:

1.  The average consumer is still a long ways from this being a behavior they understand.  I asked at the start of the day who knew what it was.  None did.  I explained it.  All of them said they'd never use a second screen--yet during the shows all of them grabbed their phones and tablets at various times to look something up (not always related to the show).

2.  The app developers continue to have a long ways to go to achieve an app that provides the user with better control of the first screen (Simple), strong integration with their friends (Social), integration of multiple sources of content (Seamless), an engaging experience (Stimulating) and the ability to find new and interesting content (Discovery).

Hang in there everyone and back away from that window ledge.  In 1995, my then-girlfriend (now wife) told me the Mosaic browser was too slow and too ill-featured to ever catch on as well.  There are too many good reasons (200B of them) to spend the time and money to get these experiences right.

My Review of Umami as a SecondScreen experience

The Umami experience didn't live up to the recent hype I had seen in various articles, blogs and tweets.  The overall experience was ok.  It often had trouble trying to determine what I was watching via the audio sync.  Manual identification was easier.  For a "synced experience", the content itself was rather static (ie about the whole episode rather than a specific scene, event or timecode)--except for the live tweets of course.  Sorry to spoil the hype, but they don't take advantage of the sync technology and only offer rudimentary social integration and rather limited stimulating content.

- Simple.  There is no ability to control the first screen.  None.

- Social.  There is rudimentary social integration with Facebook and Twitter (keys on the name of the show, you can check-in, you can comment to friends).  The Twitter feed is real time (meaning if you watch a recorded show or on the the West Coast, you have a spoiler problem).  Medium.

- Seamless.  There is no integration of content from multiple sources.  In fact, only a limited amount of shows are setup for the experience (Gossip Girl has Celebuzz for example) and it says that it only works for shows recorded within the past week.  None.

- Stimulating.  While there is audio synchronization, the level of additional information presented about the other episodes, the cast, or alternative information from Wikipedia, IMDB, etc, really isn't that great (compared to Fanhattan for example).  Low to medium.

- Discovery.  No real ability to integrate your friends' preferences or to help you find trending or popular content.  None.

Summary:
- Simple.  None.
- Social.  Medium
- Seamless.  None.
-Stimulating.  Low to Medium.
- Discovery.  None.