Last night I was watching Euro2008 semi-final Germany-Turkey together with a group of Germans. And for a Dutch guy that might be a bit strange, but it was for a good cause and it was only virtual
I was test-driving a new site called Telewebber.de, as they state themselves “watching together makes TV better” (this is a very rough translation of “gemeinsam besser Fernsehen“). The idea behind the site is that you tune in to a program on television and you chat with other users in a chat-box dedicated to the program.
That does not sound to revolutionary, but the smart thing is that they index all programs on the main commercial and national channels, and you literally tune in to your program and you will automatically find other people watching the program and chatting about it.
Here’s a screenshot of the site:
So I watched the football match last night and it takes some practice to follow the match on the TV screen while keeping an eye on the chat. But once you get the hang of it, it really enhances your TV viewing experience. Especially with a live football match and I guess most live programs like Eurovision song contest, Idols, and so on. And…you can do the good old game of guessing commercials (who knows first whose commercial it is that’s on the screen).
The service is fast enough to have a real time chat. It was amazing to see that when there was a goal or nearly a goal scored, the people in the chat went crazy in real-time. I guess that is possible now because of the limited amount of users (they’re still in beta). I wonder how that develops when they launch the service.
How sustainable is this? Well, untill we have this functionality on digital TV this is a promising new service. And I guess it will take some time since you need a return signal on your TV and not many providers have that incorporated into their systems. My only advice to the guys would be: make a mobile version as soon as possible, roll out internationally and be quick because the window of opportunity is limited.
The hottest players in online video today (in terms of new start-ups and funding) seem to be the “live video/video twitter/video as conversation”-players.
First of all there is Seesmic, the much debated startup of Loïc LeMeur, a French serial entrepreneur and organizer of the LeWeb3 conference in Paris. Seesmic is video-twitter, which means that people can post on seesmic and others can react with video. As said it is much-debated and one of the reasons is because the whole starting up of the service is described in detail by Loïc on his blog. Although I have not been able to use Seesmic, the result of the video-twittering can be seen in daily “best of” videos on Loïc’s blog and on YouTube. Below is an example:
According to Loïc this is the best Seesmix and I suppose the best example of the “conversations” people are having on Seesmic. Well judge for yourself, but I think that Loren Feldman has a point when he states the following:
If Seesmic turns out to be what Loren thinks it is, at least the start-up of Seesmic has made a great story.
Kyte.tv is another start-up in the category “live video/video twitter/video as conversation”. Backed by a.o. Nokia it is clear the goal is to drive the use of mainly mobile videocamera’s. It is interesting because it is instant, so you can follow someone (semi-)live, unedited and very upclose and personal. The problem today however is that the quality of the content and the quality of mobile video is still quite low. Here’s a random example:
Other examples in this category are Qik and Mogulus.
Although I do understand that instant uploading and instant reaction could be interesting, the entertainment-factor is quite low. So as a communication tool it could be interesting, but to be honest I’d rather use a videophone, a webcam and Skype. And how will they make money? Which advertiser wants to be associated with low quality video in a live and uncontrollable environment?
Oh and one last thing: Video is about entertainment or in the best case about communication but stop this nonsense about video as conversation.
Posted by laeven 
Posted by laeven 
Posted by laeven 
