Watching the Grammys with a SecondScreen

There were several advertised/marketed apps for tonight's Grammy's flying around the internet and on Twitter.  I thought, similar to the Super Bowl, I will do an app sampling to see how the consumer experience is improving across the board.

E! Live from the Red Carpet was an interesting app to watch the pre-Grammy show with.  For someone like myself who is not really paying attention to the red carpet, it had all of the "money shot" photos of the stars arriving in an easy to flick thru UI.  However, it behaved more like an app the assumed I was not watching TV than one that did.

The official Grammy/CBS app was surprisingly (for me at least) good.  You had decent Stimulating and Social options from nominees and winners to Twitter/chat feeds, to backstage live streaming interviews after the stars won their awards (something a real music fan would appreciate when the network is not carrying their star's post award comments).  The also packed the Social feed with "Insiders" including stars present at the award, the standard official feeds, and a wider fan feed.  They even had some decent trivia and decent polls.  As I said, a surprisingly decent UX for the consumer.

I switch over to see what Viggle and Bing's partnership was all about.  I still think their business model is interesting, but other than the Twitter feed (pretty standard in most apps today), there was not much else exciting happening in the app tonight.

I did try Miso, but could not get any Sideshows to come up and other than checking in, did not experience anything in the Social or Stimulating feature set.

So I broke ranks a little bit and gave Yap.tv a test drive since they have been improving in their UX lately.  For Social (Twitter feed, polls created by consumers, Live Chat), it does an outstanding job.

For me, the pleasant surprise of the night was TVplus.  Their show was well-curated tonight, with very relevant synchronized Stimulating events firing every 45 seconds or so.  I was actually quite captivated and hung out for awhile to see what they would choose next to try to gain my interest.

ConnecTV wasn't so hot.  Did a great job recognizing the show, but still doesn't know who my friends are and after a few minutes, SNAFU'd and showed me an ad for the upcoming Super Bowl.  A bit odd.

BuddyTV did a great job of helping me change channels but I was not looking much for their prowess in Simple and Discovery at the time (very little Social and Stimulating).

While Dijit's stimulaling features tonight continue to improve, it was Into from Yahoo that impressed me the most in terms of improving their experience from simple check-in to a more Social and Stimulating experience.

If I had to give a conclusion on the experience, I would still say there is much room for improvement. Clearly, the official Grammy app had the most relevant "official" content (to the point where I could not find Tweets slamming Rhianna's performance where I could find them in most of the 3rd party apps.  If you appreciate synchronized, relevant Stimulating content, than I think TVplus is the right answer for you.  If you like the social side, I thought ironically Yap.TV and the official Grammy app were neck and neck, thought the Yap.tv UI seemed more compelling.

Watching Cowboys and Aliens with Pocket-Blu as a Second Screen Experience

There are some interesting features with this Blu-ray experience, and some UX features that are simply annoying.  First, I love the fact that the second screen experience is highly promoted as the Blu-ray starts playback on the first screen.  (*Updated with images after blogger.com fixed their issues).

I also like the other titles it shows as having a Second Screen Blu-ray experience.  I am not aligned to the titles being tied to an app that that is not discernable until you load the disc (ie no marketing, no consumer launch effort other than the discs which carry it).

The general UI layout was ok once the Blu-ray started and the app detected it was playing.  It allowed control of the first screen like a high-end remote, but with the ability to see chapters and events/scenes within chapters.

However, the "materials" that came up as events were always the behind the scenes videos.  Granted, they were well synchronized to the playback of the feature, but I could not find a way to turn them off.  Every time it tripped across a new event, a video on the second screen would start playing, sound and all.  Talk about distracting.  It even automatically went to full screen on the tablet each time.  In the end, the only way I could figure out how to silence it was by muting my iPad with the external volume control.

I watched an hour of the feature or so and did not encounter any other kind of material (cast information, drawings, etc).  I did look to see if there was a way to see something other than videos, but it certainly wasn't obvious if there are other feature types.  I did stumble on to this, but could not get it to do anything for my experience (it hung and crashed the app).  I think it was designed to let you choose the kind of things that get fired on events, but I could not get it to work.

My overall view is that there are some great concept ideas (multiple features in a single app, marketing of the second screen, etc), but the UX and the related content wasn't thought through or tested on real consumers.  Almost, "Great platform potential, needs better title feature consideration."

Simple.  Great control of the first screen.  High.

Social.  There was a Facebook post capability, but not much more.  Low.

Seamless.  While they displayed other titles, it was only in list form, not in any sense of where you could source those features.  None.

Stimulating.  Good synchronized effort, just poor choice in content (and no other events other than video--or the UX isn't simple enough to figure that out).  I could not find cast information, other sources, etc.  Medium.

Discovery.  No indication of recommendations, etc.  None.

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)

The Second Screen Ecosystem Infographic

After more than nine million social media impressions during Sunday's Super Bowl, the media is more "a buzz" than ever about Social TV and Second Screen apps.  From the outside looking in, the process of putting together a good second screen experience for the consumer can seem like a straight forward, simple task.  However, in addition to trying to manage the feature sets that will drive real consumer engagement (Simple, Social, Seamless, Stimulating, Discovery), app developers must engage with a dizzying array service providers, content creators,advertisers, and distributors.  Just how complicated is that ecosystem?  This infographic might just say it all:

If you want to make more sense of this, come down to the Santa Monica Loews Hotel on February 22nd and meet members of the various market segments that make up this ecosystem at the Second Screen Summit.

If the infographic is just too hard to read, you can download the Adobe PDF version of it here.

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.

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A couple of fun Second Screen games for the Superbowl

I found these apps preparing for tomorrow.  The first one you can start using tonight.  It's called "Stat Smack" and the idea is that you give the app the two teams who are playing and it gives you a whole series of stat-based facts to give you the ammunition to talk smack to fans of the opposite team.  As an example, I am rooting for the Patriots tomorrow and put them in as my first team, the Giants as the 2nd.  It then gave me facts that I could start posting on Facebook to drive my Giant-supporting friends crazy.

The 2nd app is more of a contest of skills.  The app is called "PrePlay" and it's designed for those people who sit in front of the TV and yell at the coach as if he could hear them (and gives a damn about what the advice would be if he could there them),  In this app, you and some friends try to predict what the next play will be (run, pass, etc).  You put your coaching prowess to work, and the app keeps track of who can predict the next plays.  Fun, if you think you are an expert, but even more fun if your friends think they are experts.

So, enjoy the Superbowl.  Enjoy a few SecondScreen apps.  Be part of the seismic change people will talk about years from now--2012, when the Superbowl was the milestone for success in Second Screen.