Renewed Investment in the 2nd Screen Industry

In the last few weeks there has been notable activity in the 2^nd Screen space.  Watchwith raised $5 million and ConnecTV raised $1.4 million.  In the Discovery space, Matcha closed its operations while Squrl and Vidora launched consumer-oriented services.  Yahoo bought Qwiki (for creating user generated 2^nd Screen content) and Samsung acquired Boxee (presumably to attack the digital video end of the living room).  And then over the weekend, billionaire Carlos Slim announced he was investing $40 million into Shazam to accelerate their pivot from a music service to a second screen TV advertising service.  So while we have predicting that the space would consolidate (with some evidence that consolidation is taking place), there is enough market interest in the growth potential of the space to attract new investment and new services.

Special Purpose vs. Multi-screen: the second screen debate continues

We've spent time in blogs (including this one) and on conference panels debating the subject: as the industry evolves, will there be one app "to rule them all" or will the market evolve into a collection of specialty apps for major events or niche interests?

Need a #SecondScreen companion for the Oscars and the Red Carpet preshow?

This is going to be a great test of "special purpose" vs. "multi-function" apps and I would love to get feedback / comments on my blog (below) or on Twitter (@ChuckParkerTech, @S32Day, hashtag #2ndScreenOscars).

My wife is hosting a Red Carpet and Oscars party and I plan to run a few iPads and a Samsung 10.1 Tab 2 on a mixture of different apps to see what the reactions are.

On special purpose, here is what I will review:
- The official Oscars app. Last year it sported 6 camera feeds for the red carpet preshow, but also sported some technical glitches. High expectations this year.
- E! Live from the Red Carpet. Tend to a do a great job at all of these events.
- TOK for Oscars. I love their Football and Baseball app (think of 2nd Screen and Skype voice combined) and am very curious to check out their Oscars version.
- The Oscars Guide and Awards Hero (both have voting and tracking features).
- The Race to the Oscars (from the Hollywood Reporter).

For the multi-function apps, I will be spending time with:
- zeebox. They did a great job on the Grammys and Golden Globes--I am expecting more here.
- ConnecTV. While I am still getting used to the new UI, they have promised a special Oscars experience.
- Shazam. Continue to develop their features and functionality in this space.
- Viggle. Gamification / trivia -- earn rewards while you and millions of others watch.
- IMDB. Also promising a special experience for the Oscars.
- BoxFish. I am interested to see what they do with their live speech to text capabilities.
- GetGlue and IntoNow. Hugh "check-in" numbers--curious to see what they do beyond that.
- Yap.tv. Tend to have a decent social and stimulating experience for most shows.

Share your experiences with me on the blog, on Twitter, or live on Tuesday at the Beverly Hilton (1.30-6pm) at our 2nd Annual 2nd Screen Summit in LA (www.2ndScreenSummit.com)

@ChuckParkerTech

The 2013 Grammys and Second Screen

Last year, the Grammys were the most social single event of 2012 with over 12 million social impressions.  CBS just released their stats confirming that the 55th Grammys were the most viewed Grammy show since 1993, with over 28 million viewers on CBS.

But for second screen, I cannot honestly say we made a huge leap forward in the last 12 months.  Somethings are better, some worse, and some continue to be interesting to watch as consumer engagements around the experiences drive the market forward.

The interesting:  This was the 2nd opportunity we have had recently to really test "special purpose" apps vs. 3rd party "multi-function" apps.  CBS deployed an updated "special purpose" app for the Grammy's a few weeks ago (with updates coming just a few days before the event itself).  zeebox, Viggle, and E! Live from the Red Carpet lead the "multi-function" effort for this type of event.  As a consumer myself, I can't say the special purpose app was significantly better than the 3rd party apps--in fact, because I am now used to the UI of zeebox, Viggle, and E! Live from the Red Carpet, I actually found them easier to use.

The negative:

• It was still time delayed by 3 hours for the west coast.  While some apps (Viggle for example) tried to keep out spoilers, most second screen apps didn't--and even my CNN app kept telling me who the winners were before I turned it on.
• The broadcasting network (CBS) had a very busy UI/UX with too many spoilers (including photos of the winners) that should have been better than third party apps like zeebox or E! Live from the Red Carpet.  They seemed to have attempted to make the web and tablet experience the same (perhaps to save money), but watered down both in the process.
• Most of the focus was around the "social" aspect of second screen, with little attention being paid to the "stimulating" side of the experience (unlike the Golden Globes and People's Choice awards from a few weeks ago, which were great at both).

The positive improvements:

• For consumers looking for an enhanced viewing experience, zeebox did a great job during the event, though it could not stifle the time delay of tweets.  They were not in the US last year. 
• Viggle did a decent job of managing the time shift and offering consumers a quiz-based experiences throughout the show that was decently compelling--this didn't exist a year ago.
• The E! Live from the Red Carpet app gave great pre-show experiences, mostly improved from 2012's efforts in many ways.
• The program itself paid more attention in on-screen graphics and commentation to Social TV (mostly Twitter) and Second Screen, which I think is great for the industry in total.
• There were decent showings from Shazam and GetGlue (neither of which did much last year), though some good app experiences from last year seemed to have waned in their efforts.

What are your thoughts about "special purpose" vs. "multi-function" apps?

Feel free to comment here on this blog or on LinkedIn in our 2nd Screen Society forum.  Or just reach out to us on Twitter @S32Day or @ChuckParkerTech using the hashtag #SecondScreen.

Want to continue this discussion live?   Come see us on February 26th at the Beverly Hilton for our 2nd Annual 2nd Screen Summit in LA 1.30-6pm, with cocktails to follow.

How was your Second Screen Super Bowl 47?

On Thursday, we suggested a few apps you might want to try out during the Super Bowl to see what kind of enhanced and stimulating experiences the market has dream-up for such an event.  How did they stack up?

Are you ready for a Second Screen Super Bowl? (#2ndScreenSB)

The big game is on Sunday and by now everyone has been reading articles about how 36% of viewers plan to use a second screen as a companion to the big game.  With 84% of Americans planning to watch the game from their (or a friend's) house, this is a second screen industry opportunity like no other.  We are even being told that the CBS has sold more than $10-12m of advertising on the second screen alone (forgetting the $3.5m per commercial for the 1st screen).

Watching The Golden Globes with Second Screen or The "multi-function" app vs. the "special purpose" app

If you read the news much, you would have seen E! Entertainment pushing their updated second screen app in a big way for Sunday's Golden Globe awards and you would have seen NBC and others pushing zeebox for their second screen experience.

We thought this would be the perfect opportunity to explore the "multi-function" vs. "special purpose" app debate that we (as an industry) debated last Monday during CES at the Second Screen Summit and that we explore in our recently published market report on second screen, "The 2nd Screen: Transforming Video Consumption".

The Coming Battle for Second Screen

In the last few weeks, a key number of market events have taken place that give an indication of what lies ahead for Second Screen.


- Game Consoles. While all of us know have known for some time that Microsoft's announcement in the spring about SmartGlass was an important sign to their commitment to the space, most of us (including me) were surprised they delivered a revision-1 level experience relatively quickly and have a serious vision about what this change in consumer behavior can mean to their platform in terms of changing hard core gamer experience AND changing video entertaiment on the platform. But what I think is passing over the heads of most of the industry is what impact the Wii U will have on gaming and the second screen space.

An Updated View of which Second Screen Apps to Watch in 2012

Earlier this summer, I wrote a brief blog on 10 second screen apps to watch discussing which apps I thought had a compelling enough user experience to propel them forward. Since then, we have gotten together as an industry for debate in NYC (twice--once for Advertising Week, once for CEA), in Amsterdam @ IBC, and on the West Coast at the MultiScreen, NextTV and TV|Next summits. In the meantime, NextGuide and zeebox launched their apps in the US--a lot of changes have taken place.

As we are now a few weeks into the Fall TV season, I thought I would update my views on which apps seem to be furthest along the path to develop the features that will drive serious consumer adoption.

I continue to believe there are really 5 major features sets that drive consumers to pick up a device as their second screen in an attempt to add value to their first screen experience: Finding something to watch (Discovery), determining where to watch it (Seamless content sourcing, often combined with Discovery), launching that content to your first screen (Simple), getting more information about the program, whether sport stats, actor bios, games, or commerce opportunities (Stimulating), and then sharing all of that and more with your friends (Social).

Is Social TV failing? Is that the right question?

Somrat Niyogi, CEO of Miso, recently penned an article for TechCrunch that centered around the omni-presence of Twitter on live TV and that its apparent volumetric success implies that Social TV and its sibling Second Screen are failing.

An article clearly written to his peers in the industry, Somrat quickly concludes the reason he perceives that Social TV (and by extension Second Screen) are failing is that the industry fails to write apps that are compelling enough for the consumer to want to use (vs. Twitter apparently).

Second Screen and College Football

As an experiment, I thought I would test drive a number of popular apps over the weekend while watching a popular football game.  The Notre Dame / Miami match-up was perfect for the trial.

Since the game was being shown on NBCU, I gave their NBC Sports LIVE EXTRA app a try.  While it is a pretty decent app, even allowing you to stream the game on a 30-second delay, there was no real second screen experience--more of a first screen on your tablet if you are no where near a TV.

Long anticipated zeebox second screen app launches

zeebox announced their US launch today, starting with a partnerships that include NBCUniversal, Comcast Cable (Xfinity), HBO and Cinemax. For those who haven't had a chance to see the app while in the UK, it is certainly worth downloading. They are promising enhanced experiences for The Voice and Notre Dame Football on NBCU and for True Blood and Boardwalk Empire on HBO. They are additionally touting feature sets that include a 7-day program guide (for Discovery), live synchronization with their now famous zeetags (which enable contextual commerce and the look-up of Stimulating content related info), and of course Social integration with Facebook and Twitter.

A wrap-up of the 2nd Screen Summit in Amsterdam (#S3AMS)

If you weren’t fortunate enough to attend our 2^nd Screen Summit at IBC on Saturday, you really missed a special gathering (see the Twitter feed).  The afternoon was punctuated by some great presentations (“The Future of TV” by Alan Wolk of Kit Digital, “Synchronisation and Media Interaction with Your Consumer” by Alex Terpstra of Civolution), a strong review of the current 2^nd screen market data by Renaud Fuchs of Ericsson, and two great panels on monetization (featuring Joe Inzerillo of MLB) and consumer engagement (highlighted by Anthony Rose of zeebox).  We even hosted cocktails during the event and a sizable dinner after the event to take advantage of everyone’s creative juices.  For those of you that were registered attendants or are 2^nd Screen Society members or advisors, you can find the presentations and audio downloads here.  For everyone else, here were the key take-aways for me from the summit and for second screen at IBC:

The Second Screen Hype Cycle

I was reading an article recently from an industry “evangelist” describing the second screen phenomena as very “nascent technology”, that the odds of you discovering that something is on television that you didn’t pre-record or already know about is low, that the majority of consumers will continue to want to channel surf to watch the lion’s share of their content and that the “remote is not going anywhere anytime soon”.

Not a middle of the road stance.

I thought long and hard about that article.  Part of the problem being described is a classic market adoption challenge known as “crossing the chasm”.  Fair enough--people’s behaviors take time to change as we are all creatures of habit.  But as I read and re-read the article, I started looking at the individual feature comments and thought in terms of the feature sets we have used to describe second screen (Simple, Social, Seamless, Stimulating, Discovery).

And then I re-read the most recent Gartner report called the “Hype Cycle for Broadcast and Entertainment - 2012.”

The Olympics and Second Screen - not so great

While the 2012 Summer Olympics has certainly been appropriately dubbed the first "Social Olympics" (Twitter and Facebook comparisons discussed daily on the broadcast discussions by commentators) and even NBCU has come out and described it as a TV Everywhere success (streaming every event live for authenticated Pay TV subscribers in the US), it has be abysmal for Second Screen enthusiasts.

Don't get me wrong--I think the streaming capabilities to watch the events live were usually well delivered, and I have nothing against the massive Twitter and Facebook discussions.  I guess my point of view stems from the belief that until now, it has been live sports that has really driven the most valuable use cases for a second screen or companion app while watching the first screen, usually resulting in a more engaged consumer.  Knowing the stats of the football, baseball or basketball game of key players, updated in real time, is a big plus for the sports enthusiasts (of any sport).  But somehow, the Olympic implementations fell well short.

An industry lunging forward - Second Screen industry shows visible progress

I think all of us in attendance last week in NYC at the 2nd Screen Summit were partly excited and partly surprised at how much progress this nascent industry has continued to make.  For example, in February there was some high level discussion about what it would take for the game console market to develop 2nd screen apps and most of the cocktail-hour pundits predicted the gaming segment would move as slow as they produce next generation consoles--at a snail's pace.  Only a few weeks ago, the entire media industry lamented on why Steve Ballmer would launch yet again another tablet--but all of us were very wrong.  Microsoft's Xbox team has been quietly but quickly developing concepts for 2nd screen user experiences (aka "SmartGlass") for the range of consumers who love everything about their gaming consoles.  

10 Second Screen Apps to Watch in 2012

The last time we published an app summary was just before the CES show this year in early January  and then again leading up to our 2nd Screen Summit in LA in mid-Febraury.  While the nascent 2nd screen app market segment has been exploding with new apps for shows, network channels, movies, major events, and sports all over the place, 3rd party apps have been quietly improving themselves and trying to find their way into more consumer living rooms.  As we prepare for another Second Screen Summit on June 27th in NYC, we should pause and review the progress those 3rd party apps have been making.

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

Another review of zeebox as a SecondScreen experience

Last night, after the family made its way through the big turkey dinner, the discussion turned to what to watch as a family on TV.  As everyone reach for their paper-based guides for the evening line-up, I pulled out my iPad with zeebox.  I think the experience was much better than last time for Stimulating content and the Social experience.  The ZeeTags were working much better, as were "Relevant Links".  However, it seems the quality of the experience is tied to the popularity of show (meaning Zeebox is pre-processing content with humans for the upcoming popular shows).

A walk thru my experience:

First, the guide still has several different ways to sort the channel line-up (channel order, popularity), but still is not a real way to Discover new programming.  Search is still very rudimentary.  And your "friends" on Zeebox is still limited to your Facebook friends who have ALSO signed up for Zeebox (I still get confused by this requirement--see my other posts on Fanhattan and BuddyTV).

The show level UX is getting better.  The Twitter posts flying by about every second is still very distracting and still don't appear curated, but at least for the first show I watched ("Downton Abbey"), the ZeeTags and relevant links worked and had mostly meaningful detail behind them.  The "Apps and Downloads" section was only mildly relevant (seemingly off a single keyword in the meta data vs. being curated).  The details on the actors/cast on the left hand side is still not linked and unless they appear additionally as a Zeetag, there is no way to access their information (other than switching to your IMDB app of course).

As you can see in this "Zeetag level" UX, the level of information is getting better, each with a further nested level of related News and Apps/Downloads.

But the minute I left a clearly largely popular show (#1 during most of the 9pm viewing time), the level of accuracy and relevancy of the related Stimulating information fell off a cliff.  Below you can see the AbFab special with no relevant links what so ever (the Bourne Supremacy was nearly barren all over).  This is one of the larger SecondScreen problems to be solved--the rich meta data issue, allowing for a more automated approach to populating MANY, MANY shows vs. curating a few shows with humans and leaving the rest as a wasteland.

So, I am glad this was better than last week's performance, but I think it is more the result of the shows I tested than any major improvement in the underlying service.  I still owe a review with a "controllable TV" and during a show with pre-populated ZeeTags ("Desperate Scouse Wives").

Summary:

- Simple.  Still low to medium--waiting for confirmation.

- Social.  Still medium.  Need to curate (and slow down) the Twitter feeds and improve the "friending" process and capability.

- Seamless.  Still none.

- Stimulating.  Better, but room to improve significantly on catalog shows.

- Discovery.  Still none really.

My Review of Zeebox as a SecondScreen Experience

I had heard a lot of fanfare about Zeebox from UK colleagues and even saw them claiming to be the "Google of TV" in a recent article.  Having landed in the UK for the holidays, I thought I would give it a try.  Now to be fair, I am told they curate certain shows with syncrhonized content call "ZeeTags" (currently done for "Desperate Scousewives"), but I did not get to experience that yet (will try it out next Monday).  There is also the ability for it to control the first screen for some TV's (see further below), but I am still trying to find a television set with the right OS to sample that experience as well.

The overall experience is decent, though not yet up to the hype built around it (at least as compared to other existing apps out there).  There is a guide-level UX that sorts itself by either current popularity, your friends' views of the show, or by the normal channel line-up.  Unfortunately, it only recognizes Zeebox friends vs. recognizing content your friends have liked on Facebook via other applications.

The detailed show-level view is also well done, with a quick summary of the actors and relevant links to the deeper meta data surrounding the show.  It also has a Twitter feed and provides the ability for you to comment directly during the show.  However, the UX starts to get a little ugly here are the Twitter feed does not seem to curated and literally updated about once a second when I was trying it out, making it distracting to the viewing experience (as a  comparison example, TVplus has curates the feed and promotes the "best" Tweet about every 45 seconds which is more manageable).  It does have the concept of "Live ZeeTags" which seem to populated from the audio stream, but clicking on them generally yields useless information not really relevant to the show.

Simple.  I am told that for certain TV's, the experience of having the iPad app tune directly to what you find in the guide view is a good experience.  If I get it working, I will update the blog.  Low to Medium.

Social.  While there is a good attempt at integrating Twitter and Facebook, the UX of that capability has a ways to go.  It needs to be able to recognize your Facebook friends regardless of their sign-up for the app (same with content likes) and the Twitter feed needs to be curated (and if possible, recorded from the live broadcast so there are no spoilers).  Medium.

Seamless.  There is currently no feature that integrates anything but the live TV guide of your provider (Free to air, cable, satellite).  None.

Stimulating.  There is at least one currently synchronized show ("Desperate Scousewives"), an attempt at Live Zee Tags for relevant information, some more detailed information and links about the cast & crew, etc.  It is no where near the level of Fanhattan yet, but heading in the right direction.  Medium.

Discovery.  I did not see evidence of a real discovery feature, but there was some rudimentary genre filtering based on friends recommendations, etc.  None to Low.