Thoughts on Using Audio Sync for Automated Content Recognition in Second Screen Apps

(this originally appeared in Civolution's Vision Newsletter at NAB 2012)

There has been a lot of a debate in the blogosphere and trade journals about the value of automated content recognition (ACR) to the user experience and the best way to provide that capability.  Let’s start by exploring the value of the feature first.  Most apps are using the concept of ACR to provide ease of use for the consumer by identifying the show they are watching and “checking them in” to the show (IntoNow is probably the most well-known for this, but many others like ConnecTV and Viggle use it as well).  Shazam uses it to provide a launch point to additional information about a product you are watching in a commercial.  TVplus uses it to provide a synchronized content experience.  There have been discussions about holding the microphone open (or checking occasionally) and when the consumer is determined to be watching something else, to prompt them to change channels (whether for rewards or otherwise). 

The Future of ACR: A Major Weapon in the Digital Video Ecosystem Arms Race

We’ve been talking about ACR (automatic content recognition) in blogs and at conferences for quite some time now (most recently, the 10th prediction for second screen trends in 2013).  For many players in the ecosystem (including consumers), the ability to trigger an event on the second screen based on what is happening on the first screen is somewhat of a holy grail of enabling technology capabilities.  But as we discussed at NAB in April and at IBC in September, this has so far remained elusive in terms of real scale for consumers reached because of the challenges inherent in each of the various approaches.

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).

My review of ConnecTV as a SecondScreen Experience

While I had good things to say on Sunday for the fledgling app during the NFL game, it was not that impressive tonight.  To start with, I sat down with my wife who was watching one of her recorded shows.  ConnecTV relies on ACR or your manual tuning to pick-up a show--but only picks up a limited list of current shows from your provider--so no DVR'd material.  Arrgh.

Then I asked the wife to indulge me in some live TV for a bit.  She took her iPad upstairs to finish her show and I tuned into the first network (CBS) I could find.  It struggled to pick up the show, so I turned up the sound rather loud and it picked it up.  Little did I know it was secretly posting to my Facebook account while this was happening, never asking for my permission or telling me it was happening.  I have to admit, this is the first "auto check-in" app I have seen that offers without a confirmation of sorts and without informing you--gonna upset a few people I am sure.  Ironically, I found out about this when a friend complained I had posted 5 or 6 different shows in a matter of a few minutes while testing the ACR...nice. [as I was about to post the blog, I tested a few more things and did notice a very small text pop-up about 15 seconds after I tuned to a channel saying I was checked-in, and then it disappear after about 1 second--not the right UX for this kind of thing--on to deleting them all from my FB.]

The content that appeared during the sync'd experience didn't "wow" me.  Maybe I am jaded by some of the prowess of the other apps, but similar to Sunday's experience, I essentially got a new factoid on the main actor about every minute (fine with the timing), with an ad below it, and that was it.  I had the Twitter feed on the right, but they have this funny thing about my friends who are commenting in general and, of course, despite being quite brash with my Facebook credentials on check-ins, I apparently have no friends in the ConnecTV world and need to re-build my network.  Arrgh again.

I switched to another show on another major network during primetime and actually saw almost no activity (the 3rd post was 6 days old).  I am assuming they have a smaller population of users right now. The rest of the experience was the same--weak synchronized content, and an advertisement.

So I switched to the Mavericks-Clippers game.  Similar to football, it actually did a decent job of showing you current stats, the last play, etc.  During the commercial, it branched out to ESPN news, the Sport Center highlights, etc.  The experience here was not on on the level of Courtside by NBA, but was pretty good.

I finally waited and tried the news and ESPN Sports Center and the Weather Channel.  Fox had an interesting UX (showing the news stories being discussed), ESPN had a similar UX, and the Weather Channel was blank (why show it?).

So, the summary?

Simple.  None.  Despite knowing my provider and zip, there is no attempt at tuning my TV or telling me what channel to change to.

Social.  I think its low at best.  Sure it has Twitter and Facebook integration and lets me "chat", but since it doesn't recognize my Facebook friends, I have no one to chat with.  Then there's the stealth check-in abuse of my FB.  Arrgghh.

Seamless.  No integration of multiple sources of content.

Stimulating.  They get some credit for the ACR synchronization, but they aren't really utilizing it.  Worse, it only works on live shows--good for the networks, bad for real consumers these days.  I would say Medium (without the ACR, I would say low).

Discovery.  None.

An initial review of Viggle as a SecondScreen experience

Tonight must be beta night because there seem to be a plethora of new apps in the second screen hitting the iOS marketplace today but the functionality is just not ready.  Viggle, like TVDinner, launched with much fanfare and funding recently, but as a loyalty/rewards play vs. the "gaming" approach TVDinner is taking.  I was admittedly disappointed that it only had an iPhone experience, but will assume the tablet versions are coming.

No special account was required (open to the public).  The initial sign-up was thru my Facebook account.
I was greeted with a 1500 bonus point award for successful sign-up (yay).  I then watched a 2-minute video on how Viggle works, how the point system allows you to acquire real-world goods, etc.

I checked-out the featured show (or tried to), but Viggle requires that the ACR (audio sync in this case) works to allow you to check-in to the show.  Not one to be easily rebuffed, I tried other live TV channels.  I tried 5 or 6 with the sound cranked up (wife now upset) and stood next to the speakers.  Occasionally, it would tell me the list of networks it handles (seemed as upset as I was).  There apparently is no manual way to check-in to a show (if the ACR fails).  Seems like a serious UX flaw, regardless of what the requirements are from the brands/networks/advertisers.

I spent the rest of the time checking out what rewards I would be able to get if I could check-in.
I was able to check-out American Idol (a featured show) further to see what Stimulating content would normally be on offer.  Links to IMDB, Twitter (chatter), Facebook, Wikipedia, iTunes, Amazon and Bing.  IMDB didn't quite work right (launched me to the 2002 season).  Twitter worked fine but was not curated (Idol was on and there were too many tweets).

Then it suddenly offered me 10 Viggle points to book a reminder to watch Alcatraz.  Interesting approach.

I am going to check back in a few days to see if the ACR problem clears up.
I'd like to see the app working to get a real feel for it.

My initial guess on what we'll find:

Simple.  Probably none.

Social.  Probably Medium.  No curation is a problem for big shows like American Idol.

Seamless.  Probably none.

Stimulating.  A lot of stuff going on there.  I think the work on the cast/crew is light, but the rest of the links to content is strong.  I'd like to see some sync'd content for all that work on the ACR via audio.  Probably Medium.

Discovery.  Looks like none.

Let's check back together soon.  Some more images are below to give you a better feel for the app.

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.”

My Review of the Walking Dead Second Screen app built by Red Bee Media

There has been a huge amount of discussion in the trade press and blogosphere about what consumers are doing on their second screen and if they should be engaged in them at all. Certainly in this blog, we have discussed that one reason they might want to engage is to get access to more Stimulating content--everything from stats for sports fans to more detailed information about the show or even commerce opportunities.

Well the Walking Dead FX app built by Red Bee Media is certainly the most stimulating app a fan could hope for. If you are not familiar with the show, it is in essence a show about zombies and the humans who are trying to survive in a world full of them. That means lots and lots of zombies need to be killed--perhaps the attraction of the show itself. This app capitalizes on that fundamental "raison d'etre" of the show--by creating a game out of trying to predict who will kill the most zombies in a particular episode, what will be the most used weapn for the kills, and what the final kill count will be at the end of the show.

The 2nd Screen Super Bowl - Lots of Activity

It was a great, well-played game for the fans, and the second screen action was everywhere during the game.  Apps to call the next play (PrePlay), apps to talk "smack" (Smack-stat), apps to check into the commercials and rate them (IntoNow), apps to give you live streaming of other football angles (NBC) and the reaction of the Polar Bears from Coca-cola, apps for good ol' fashioned stats on steroids with graphics to boot (NFL '11, ESPN ScoreCenter, theScore, etc), and 3rd party Second Screen apps doing the best they can with the Super Bowl material in front of them (ConnecTV, Umami, Viggle, Yap.TV).

First, I spent some time with the much advertised NBC.com live streaming site (laptops only).  It had great promise, allowing you to choose 5 different camera angles that were not being shown on TV.  Good UI, et.  Problem is that it was about 90 seconds behind real-time, so useless to use as a second screen while watching the game on the first screen.

Then I spent some time on the Coca-cola polar bears site.  While seemingly the most innocuous and least interesting approach, it was the biggest hit amongst the children as was always worth a quick look from the adults when something major happened on the 1st screen--especially the tie in with their own commercials.

Then I spent some time with TVplus.  They continue to do a good job on the timing of new events (about every 45 seconds) and the selection of information to share.  While not really stimulating for football, a great UX for TV shows and movies.

Then I popped over to IntoNow.  They made a big deal about giving you the option of voting on the Super Bowl commericals.  Actually it was fun, and the room got into rating the commericals.  It only recognized about half of the commercials by sound (ACR).  To be fair, I think their audio sync works better than anybody's, but it is the Super Bowl and the background noise will be what it is.

ESPN ScoreCenterXL has a pretty decent stat summary, allowing you to even do team comparisons, etc.  This is a shot from half-time, showing the teams were in theory neck-and-neck.

Back to IntoNow for a surprisingly good set of sport stats as well.  Decent UI with play-by-play action, players stats, and a Twitter feed (not so interesting).

ConnecTV actually recognized the show (2nd try) and had a decent sports 2nd screen expereince.  Good stats, good Twitter feed, etc.

Umami also surprised me.  They had a number of additional UX's on tonight's game that are not normally there, including a playback center of the night's Super Bowl commercials--very handy.  There graphics were also on par with NFL'11--impressive.

I expected more form BuddyTV, but to be fair, I was not in my own home, so it could not tune to the channel and build the 2nd screen experience.  There should be a manual option for this...

Miso still needs to graduate beyond the check-in app capability.  Not much else to discuss.

Yap.TV was interesting.  Took part in a few polls, did some chatting/tweeting.  I could see that if I were stuck in a hotel room, this would be interactive, vs being in a room with 15 people and not feeling the need to be social on line.

Viggle.  The ACR worked right out of the gate--first try,  Yay.  Again interesting approach where it asked a question every 45 seconds and by answering, you earned points.

I don't know what the press will say tomorrow or what BlueFin and others will say about the traffic, the tweets, etc.  But the opportunity to get engaged was everywhere--it is not a question of creating experiences that are worth the consumers' attention while they keep the majority of their brain cycles on the 1st screen.

I

IntoNow released a new version of their app on the ipad - an updated review of their Second Screen experience

IntoNow (owned by Yahoo) released a new version of their iPad app today, promising more information about the shows, etc.  When I launched the app, it forced a re-login into the app (very seamless and easy).  Clicking on the activity button brought up the tell-tale audio sync screen which worked flawlessly in most of the scenarios I tried (unlike many other apps unfortunately).  It correctly identified the show I was watching and automatically "checked me in" via Facebook and Twitter (it did NOT give me an option to say "no" to its posting on my social networks).

It took me a little while in the UI to find the new features (maybe I am just tired).  I re-checked their "Popular" and "Discover" features to see if there was any real Discovery going on.  Popular, was no surprise, the most "checked into" content--the numbers per show in the last 24 hours weren't big (surprisingly only 300 or so for the most watched show) and since I "don't have any friends" in IntoNow except those who have gone thru the additional hassle of re-asking me to be their friend from some existing social network, my "Friends" portion of most popular wasn't very populated with information (btw, I still don't think the Amazon-style of your friends watched this so you should, too, is even low-level Discovery unless already filtered by your own likes/check-ins, etc).  The "Discover" section still seemed to be a Featured section (I could be wrong) as I am not sure how it could recommend Project Runway, King of Queens, and NBA Basketball when all it knows about me in the app is Hawaii Five-O (it does NOT import my previous Facebook likes the way some other apps like Fanhattan do).

Searching for the new features, I went back to the original "check-in" option (yes it made me check-in again--a feature I just don't understand with the poor track record of audio ACR these days, though again, the IntoNow ACR worked very well).  The Twitter feature had a page for cast members' tweets from the show (and the official show tweet) and a page of posts from the rest of the world about the show.  I could not tell if it was curated, but it was definitely not timeline managed (ie the ending was given away when I checked the tweets).

I finally figured out how to scroll the middle part of the title detail UI up the screen (wasn't possible in the previous version) to find the new Stimulating features in the app.  I was able to see the cast member details by actor (though the main page of actor photos didn't populate).  There were also in-app browser links to IMDb, the show's Official Website, Wikipedia, Facebook and "Shop" (which brought up a blank screen).  The iTunes link launched the iTunes app in my iPad to the Hawaii Five-O search.  All the other links worked reasonably well, though I still think just launching a browser page is risky for the consumer experience.

So, in terms of revising the November 11, 2011 review:

- Simple.  Still no ability to control the first screen.

- Social.  I don't think Social has really moved on from Medium.  Still hate that I have to be friends twice with my Facebook friends to connect to them--frustrating.

- Seamless.  There is still no integration of multiple content sources--it assumes you are watching TV and gives you an experience based on that source of content only.  It still launches you to iTunes, but again, I am not sure that is what consumers want in terms of Seamless content source integration.  Low.

- Discovery.  While I think they are trying to improve this feature, they have not made great strides.  The concept of "your friends are watching..." is not very helpful unless my own history of preferences are taken into account and since they do not use my Facebook history, the most they coud be using is my IntoNow history--limiting.  Still low.

- Stimulating.  They did make a marked improvement in additional content about the show, though haven't yet implemented any synchronized content experiences.  I would improve their rating from Low to Medium.

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First Quarter, 2013: Are we on track? An update to the definitive research "The 2nd Screen: Transforming video consumption"

The first 3 months of 2013 has been explosive for 2^nd Screen.  Apps have improved, new apps have continued to launch, clear evidence of growth in the revenue associated with the market can be seen, and the convergence of 2^nd Screen companion experiences and 2^nd Screen viewing experiences has continued.

In this brief summary, I am going to make references to our published research (“2^nd Screen: Transforming Video Consumption”, a 252-page report published during our 2^nd Screen Summit @ CES on January 7^th), as well as to blogs and conferences we have hosted and attended during the last 3 months.  However, the information should be relatively coherent if you have been paying attention to the space even a little bit.  If you are attending today’s 2^nd Screen Sunday @ NAB, you will have the opportunity to buy discounted copies of the Executive Summary, Market Starter Pack, or the Full Report as required.  

1. Market Trends.  Perhaps the best way to gauge where the market is headed to look back at the predictions we made in the report (page 77 and in our blog on New Year’s Eve) and to see if we are on track:
1. The "digital land grab" continues, marked by consolidation,
   
   failure, and improved user experiences.  Well Viggle didn’t successfully complete the acquisition of GetGlue, but the market itself has continued to consolidate.  Dijit did acquire Miso, giving the consumer branded NextGuide app which excels in the “To Discover” segment a strong head start on developing its features “To Enhance” the consumers’ viewing experience after they have found a show.  Additionally, zeebox continues to develop its consumer feature set out as have other app notables (Yap.TV launched v.4.0, Turner launched a new March Madness app that was even better than last year, and the Super Bowl, the Grammys and the Academy awards all got their own bespoke app experiences for second screen).
2. Social feeds will be a feature, not the experience.  There has been a decent amount of debate in the blogosphere and at conferences, led by industry thought leaders Alan Wolk and Jesse Redniss.  Twitter is perhaps the best and most used tool for Social TV, but Social is only one component of the second screen experience, being aptly rounded out by the features making up the “To Control”, “To Discover” and “To Enhance” segments.  I am sure this debate will continue as Social TV continues to enjoy continued growth and press.
3. "Discovery" will become a household word.  Well, we’re making progress, but we’re not there yet.  Expect DirecTV, Dish, and Time Warner Cable all to make announcements around their platform discovery in the coming months and for start-ups like BuddyTV, Dijit (NextGuide), Yap.TV and Matcha to continue their progress as well.  While Digitalsmiths continues to make progress in the Pay TV and CE space, larger industry service providers have been making their push (Kit Digital, Gracenote) as well.
4. Tablet and smartphone usage reports will become about activities related to the TV.  Nielsen launched a social measurement service (after buying SocialGuide) and Twitter bought BlueFin.  More and more the statistics are pointing to behaviors while watching TV (shopping, looking for a show to watch, voting, etc).  Expect this trend to continue.  It is no longer a question of whether or not people use a second screen but rather what they are doing with them.
5. Studios and networks save money, apps grow in 2 directions.  We saw announcements around CES where CBS Connect and Fox Now are consolidating multiple shows into their consumer facing app.  More importantly, we predicted that these branded content apps would create alliances with 3^rd party apps like NextGuide and ConnecTV to expand their reach by syndicating their official metadata and content to promote a quality branded experience—and today Hardie Tankersly from Fox will be on stage to discuss exactly that.  
6. Gamification will begin to lose favor with the press and consumers, only to begin to add value again towards the end of 2013.  Perhaps it is a bit too early to weigh in on this trend.
7. Amazon and eBay will engage in a battle for the Second Screener's M-Commerce.  While Amazon is making progress with its “X-ray” feature for Kindle, there has not yet been a push from them on commerce and “Watch with eBay” is still massively under marketed.
8. Cloud-based digital lockers will finally be taken seriously by consumers and the rest of the ecosystem.  There has not yet been evidence of discovery platforms scanning or presenting results from the UltraViolet locker service, but there are now 11m accounts on record and Saffron Digital announced an end-to-end service in partnership with Akami for UltraViolet retailers.  Progress.
9. Device makers will jump into second screen with both feet.  Samsung certainly is “all in” on the concept, launching several second screen efforts to drive real connectivity amongst their smart phones, tablets and Smart TVs.  Expect Nokia, HTC, and Motorola to come to the party soon.
10. ACR and the battle of the digital video ecosystems.  Prior to CES, there had already been market rumors of Netflix working their streaming ecosystem towards a second screen platform.  Now that DIAL (owned by Netflix) is out in the open and supported by  Google, there is a real possibility that an open API system will decrease the cost and complexity for 3^rd party apps to connect to devices in the living room including Smart TVs and set top boxes.  Additionally, companies like Flingo are creating white label ACR ecosystems for smart TVs and other digital video devices, allowing the ecosystem owners to go to market quickly with a synchronized content capability.  Watch this space closely.
2. Market sizing.  We took a bold stance in our research report (page 55) on revenue in the 2^nd Screen space, claiming that 2012 had already seen $490m of attributable revenue from this market segment and the we expected the market to reach $5.9B by 2017.  When I stood on stage at CES to discuss this, I saw a lot of disbelief in the crowd.  We walked the room through the breakdown of mobile and online video advertising  ($6B growing to $17B) and m-commerce ($76B growing to $158B) and out logic for the incredibly small sliver of those markets that will be captured by 2^nd Screen experiences in the living room (forgetting the opportunities in the convergence place between companion and viewing experience).  Right out of the gate, Super Bowl 47 had press for CBS Interactive claiming to have sold $10-12m in advertising for the 2^nd Screen along.  Then the stats for living room shopping while watching TV started to pour in from various analytic agencies (very high percentages of smartphone and tablet owners are shopping while watching TV).  Throw in the content syndication model for apps sponsored by the NBA and MLB, and you quickly get a sense that this market is on a strong upward trend.
   
3. Consumer app experience.  To round out the Q1 view, we should look at what applications have significantly improved their feature set.  This is important because no matter what the revenue or business model is for a particular app experience or ecosystem, if the consumer isn’t engaged and using the app on a regular basis, there is no opportunity to attract revenue.

1. Events.  The Super Bowl (Keynoted today by Jason Kint), the Grammys and the Academy Awards all got their own bespoke app from their network sponsors.  March Madness upgraded their amazing 2012 experience to deliver an even more eye-popping 2013 app.  I would expect the Masters to double down on their strong 2012 showing and deliver an event better experience next week.
2. 3^rd Party Apps.  zeebox has continued to develop new feature sets for its app. 
   
   Yap.tv launched its 4.0 version and a Microsoft’s Xbox SmartGlass continued to expand its presence by launching an exclusive experience for The Hobbit.
3. Network apps.  Fox Now, CBS Connect, USA Anywhere and Bravo Now continue to improve their app experiences, with Fox and NBC distributing their metadata to 3^rd party apps to improve their branded content consumer experience across multiple apps.  HBO Go continues to invest in its converged 2^nd Screen companion and viewing experience app as Game of Thrones hits its 3^rd season.
4. Sports apps.  The NBA continues its great 2^nd Screen season, cleaning up on the Social side of the experience set and the MLB is just underway with a new set of features for MLB At Bat (presented on stage today by Joe Inzerillo).
5. Finally, converged experiences are continuing to
   
   be a trend, helping consumers manage the transition from the living room scenario where a companion experience is desirable and a mobile scenario where a viewing experience is what is required.  March Madness and HBO Go leverage the authenticated Pay TV network for their video experience and I am expecting the Masters to do the same next week.  MLB and the NBA give you the opportunity to have a “lite” stats-only experience for free and a paid subscription for viewing out of market games.  With significant advertising and subscription revenue at stake here (and the converged experience being highly desirable by consumers), expect this significant industry trend to continue despite its increased development costs.  Expect sports apps and premium branded subscription TV to lead the way forward here.

So a relatively short but very action-packed summary for nearly 100 days of market activity.

We are looking forward to continuing the conversation today at 2^nd Screen Sunday @ NAB, through a few webinars over the coming weeks, at our 2^nd Screen Summits in NYC on June and IBC in September, and, of course, through our blog and Twitter activity (@ChuckParkerTech, @S32Day).

Look out for the next major update on this comprehensive report on June 27^th in NYC.

10 Predictions for the Second Screen Industry in 2013

It seems that technology triggers are often accompanied by the hype of future potential benefits, while the real value is elusive and slower to appear than industry journalists, analysts, or pundits would like, but I am going to lay out 10 scenarios that will develop in this still nascent industry during 2013.

Revisiting Microsoft's Xbox SmartGlass Platform

Last week I had the opportunity to moderate a second screen panel and attend several other panels and presentations at the Variety Entertainment App Summit in LA.  While I greatly enjoyed the panel on second screen monetization with YuMe, Magic Ruby, Cinram/1K and MTV, I thought the most eye-opening session was the presentation of Microsoft Xbox SmartGlass by Mark Turner.  While I had seen Ron Pessner present something similar back at a 2nd Screen Society in NY last June and I had been playing with the platform at home for the past 2 weeks (and even wrote about it last week), somehow the epiphany of just how big this could be for the entire second screen ecosystem had escaped me.  Let me talk you through the key points they get me excited and explain why I spent this weekend re-exploring the platform at home.

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)