Tweetdeck - 1 Column Aggregate Followers/Searches + Smaller Font. Easy.

Twitterific followed by Twhirl then Tweetdeck, whats next

I still remember being slower than the absolute cutting edge when it came to using a twitter 3rd party client, where lo + behold u no longer had to press refresh to see latest follower updates. It took noticing Duncan Riley’s setup to finally download twitterific. Which ironically as I’m using my old powerpc gen1 imac 20″ at moment - w/ twhirl not working on it - i’ve been reusing twitterific : It still works well in that its stable, runs smoothly without hogging lots of memory etc, doesnt bounceball freeze altho it does have inherent problems such as inability to quickly reply, twitter search integration and so on.

So like alot of people I moved onto twhirl. Class leading UI, fast ability to reply, dm etc, and ability to change colour layout when bored. However and I may not have been using it to its total capability, I was still heading off to search.twitter.com to track topics/keywords, the persistent ones of which I add to google reader*. (i put everything in google reader, thousands of feeds - so *I WISH some1 namely google or a feedly type company would create an air app for google reader, so I could watch new items refresh while i was working. This would transform google reader the same way twitter clients do 4 tweets.)

What I really want to talk about though in this post is TV : In the next year or two TV networks are going to totally grok the importance of microblogging and hashtags (putting # before a tweet so when others do all these tweets can be aggregated) for the social element of Television. Typically we watched TV together, as families, then talked about it at work, but then TV audiences became more and more fragmented. But the tools and demand is such that these collective experiences can be repacked up so people can learn from + share about the different media they consume, namely film + Tv shows. (BTW, for any TV execs, traditional TV media buyers, even digital agencies looking at microblogging opportunities to integrate with yer clients really big TV budget… well I’m happy to come in and show some live case studies of yer tv shows

Having worked at ninemsn an eon ago, it’s full circle as the collision of the internet and television is happening, and while there are the obvious nirvanas of interactive TV (which the netflixs, cable companies, itunes etc will continue to dominate) the new sharing (that word Facebook now love) based elements (that of the social interaction around television shows we all watch previously referred to as “Watercooler chat” whereby people talk about what they watched last night and voice their opinions) which to a degree underpin the new playboy Boxee, are still yet to be polished up and refined. No1 owns the SocialTV space is my point. Boxee, built on top of open source television on demand, is a beautiful end-end implementation if I bring the TV/monitor, but if I already use Azureus, VLC and Twitter as standalone apps - Boxee is very attractive to me as a FrontRow like presentation layer for my media (which when I get my 120″ projector screen out of storage and have a place with a corresponding wall with a Panasonic HD projector for $1500AUD, by which time there is hopefully a new edition MacMini); But i prob won’t be using Boxee to download. And I’ll probably use twitter to communicate about tv shows with others as it has the mass volume of peeps on it doing so.

Fred Wilson being a Twitter + Boxee investor (gr8 combination btw kudos!) who hopefully can use his 140 character keiretsu clout/cloud to facilitate smart twitter integration/visualisation into boxee. Pictured from Fred is 103" Gizmodo screen, while my screen (in storage is 120"!) but need a wall plus Panasonic HD projector... to which macmini, speakers + receiver can be bolted into! Boxee would be a great UI vs using solely VLC player:) But adding Twitter smarts could be something new esp w/good visualisation. Click for Freds pic on Flickr.

Tweetable.TV = #showname_SeriesNumber_EpisodeNumber

So where should it go from here : When boxee start pulling in twitter hashtagged tv show content and filter it to corresponding show/series/episode, and act in effect like a tweetdeck for tv - then boxee is cooking for gas for me. So via my blackberry I can twitter while watching last episode of brililant bbc3 show #beinghuman S01E06 + that then displays in some kewl visualisation type way to boxee members that are also watching that episode and have opted into show based tweets or those from me. In effect a Stocktwits for TV. That could be a startup in itself. Not to mention the collective harnessing of tweet sentiments (as the Summize team built into advanced search and by extension the API) I wonder what Howard Lindzon, founder of Wallstrip bought by CBS, and then founder of Stocktwits, and keeper of a great blog in these macroapocalypse times! I’ve gotta get his new book : The Wallstrip Edge : How to use Trends to Make Money. How Apt and timely ! Delicious tagged it to purchase when funds allow.

The More I think about this the more I think it could be a good business startup idea. See how well I hide my ideas so NOBODY steals them. Quite the opposite. Realtime market research i much prefer, as well by writing the opportunity up and pressing publish it makes yer brain process the real feasibility likelihood of a TVC station buying as exit or major newspaper media trying to diversify into media as a TV station may have too much bias to its own programming inherently ? Is this a good startup idea ? Ala stocktwits for TV ?

With the #dollhouse for example, one big problem is people’s ignorance of other available substitutes. They are so used to having the limited geographic, free to air + cable tv station programming, that they are rating dollhouse when compared to a limited subset. For example the SciFi Cable channel have a brilliant show called #TheSanctuary (mentioned in last post) that is a very similar concept to #Dollhouse. #BeingHuman as I’ve mentioned ditto is a BBC3 channel, so unless u r UK based and had that channel, without the internet or unless u r a globally travelling TV business development exec, u wouldn’t have the ability to compare #dollhouse to the proper universe of substitute shows. And fact is when u compare dollhouse to these 2007-9 shows and not to the shows creators previous shows from up to a decade ago - it doesnt hold up very well. Even HBO is struggling in current market where the audience expect as good as or better than cinema quality productions. Thats why HBO commissioned/bought Six Feet Under/American Beauty creator Alan Ball’s vampire Sookie Stackhouse played by Anna Paquin True Blood show based on the bookset. It’s a different world, TVwise, very competitive and the internet should allow greater choice for consumers, and their ability to get full information about what to watch. Hence, what is so exciting as a “product guy” is the new types of discovery/recommendations features of television programming that can be invented. And alot of this is about facilitating social TV viewing via Tweetable.TV, domain available hehe (if u love an idea set it free and then see if it returns with funding or tech prototype, ping me if either - got a whole TV recommendations algorithmic idea ie Pandora.com of Television Recommendations + realistically leave any ideas on what u think would work or not)

Social TV is gonna be huge, twitter is the platform, yer mobile is the remote, media players are the distribution, hehe.

So What is the Current Tweetable TV Consumer Process ?

1. Show Debrief : During the week whether it’s #Lost, #Damages, #Dollhouse, #BSG, and so on - there will be episode recaps of the show by blogs.

2. Leadup Buzz to this Week’s Ep : The original night the program goes to air (in America as it is usually first) in the hours leading up people will begin to twitter about looking forward to kicking back on a Friday and watching Battlestar Galactica, Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse. Or on Sunday - Big Love, Damages and Lost.  On Monday if u r in Australia it’s Underbelly.

3. IRL - Just Before EP : In Real Life, closer to the show u will see people twitter to their friends asking whether they want to come over to watch, as well as reminding themselves via telling others to program their DVR if they arent going to be able to catch it.

4. Avoiding Spoilers “Turn of all devices please ladies + gentlemen” : Just before commencement for those not watching, some will say they are leaving their phone in another room as they dont want spoilers.

5. Liveblogging : And obvs when show starts, there will be a few liveblogging the show. Sometimes there are spoilers, but so far people’s sensibility of not wrecking it for others is pretty good. I found it invaluable the little tidbits for watching shows like Mad Men.

#Dollhouse search on Twitter.

6. Syndication 2.0 : Once the show is over for its first viewing - here is where the subtlety of Programming Syndication 2.0 kick in :

- First you get timezone differences in time shown between East Coast and West Coast viewers.

- Ditto in Australia, #Underbelly shows earlier in VIC/NSW than WA, w hich means Perthians often stay away from Twitter search streams if they want to not get spoilers.

- Also the HD x264 versions have gone straight into Torrent  encoding + distributing DVRs, bringing the show to the masses subscribed to via their trackers/mininovas/piratebay’s show based rss feeds

- And the kicker is the alert that these are available are hashtagged by the show names via twitter to those following #dollhouse #lost #underbelly etc. Why press refresh on a web browser, when u can be opted in already to 140 character alerts + direct hyperlinks to the file.

7. New Consumers 9 minute Download or Real Time Stream leading to New Tweets : Once consumer of show gets ep via legal means eg Ch9 are getting faster uploading Underbelly legally even tho they have awful hyro propietary format/midres: Or they get it via private torrent tracker or public mininova/piratebay type means. The net is within a couple hours of show being first shown it is consumed around the world. This then creates a 2nd generation of fresh tweets where people experience the cycle, blogging about looking forward to watching show tonite, inviting friends around, sharing links, and weeting bout show, possibly then writing an epsiode recap the next day.

8. Regeneration : This cycle keeps regenerating itself. The shows with more velocity get network effect; Sometimes before it has even travelled to the other coast. And certainly hours/days/months quicker if u r in another geographic zone. Dollhouse for example good or bad, because of buzz has a huge amount of downloads and people talking about it online. There was builtup demand due to writers strike, and demand for new material from creator of cult shows Buffy, Angel, Firefly. In pure TV ratings numbers, it would likely look like a dud - as low ratings means less advertising sales. This typically leads to cancelled show. But along with torrentfreak.com ratings where shows and movies can be viewed millions of times, if not commercialised, tomorrow’s TV exec is going to have to start taking a holistic view to internet legal, illegal activity and all the legal viral buzz metrics before during and after showing. It may even help improve the product - and which to keep or cull Dollhouse for example may end up making lots of dollar$ via series/episode downloads on Itunes and hulu.com like channels. (dollhouse is a fox show yeh so being in australia not sure if its on hulu and/or itunes?)

What wil be interesting to see if the data can be sliced n diced so that the different types of tweets can be categorised into audience reactions to specific episodes, and other types of content such as media interviews with the talent/creators, links to media files and so on. This is the technical holy grail. Further, there needs to be a very specific attribution of the tweet to show name, series number and episode. This is same naming convention as exists in the world of bit torrent search and file naming. For example there has been a huge current commotion on Dollhouse and how much of a disappointment it is post Buffy/Angel/Firefly. Similar to some of the issues with getting geocoded user generated content, ideally as Australian/European/etc are watching #Dollhouse S01.E03 there would be the ability filter #dollhouse tweets specific to that episode. (versus in general about show or other show links) Further, assumptions such as someone tweeting about a show without mentioning the episode number at same time other people are tweeting/while the show is on, would ideally be able to be implicitly attributed to the episode so a larger index of structured user content can be stored.

Interesting research in the space is Mike Walsh’s world of Futuretube mentions that in Japan some of the higher reach than Youtube sites show have live social messaging at bottom of screen; (techcrunch reading on this + wired feature on founder vinteresting; GR8 stuff Mr_Walsh : “In Japan, the most popular video sharing site is Nico Nico Douga (Smiley Smiley Video) attracts almost a billion page views a month. The most distinctive feature of the site is an on-screen commenting function, where user messages scroll as commentaries across the video while playing like a form of visual karaoke.” This is where twitter #hashtags are going, and what consumers are in effect creating for themselves already.They could become the currency or language by which WaterCooler 2.0 conversations happen around entertainment programming.

Bigger than YouTube in Japan and look how important social element is according to Founder : ""Even when the videos are boring, the viewers are getting together and entertaining each other.." via Wired

I was meant to mention I now use Tweetdeck, but I ended up writing about Future of TV…

I mainly use tweetdeck at moment other than iMac powerpc not liking twhirl because of the ability to integrate searches, half of which are TV show related.. so I can track what others are thinking about my favourite shows. They r a great source of relevant episode recaps and talent interviews as well. This is the world that Google is so far away from. And ironically by getting rid of professional content, and allowing legal TV sites such as Hulu to expand, even with YouTube Google are not only missing Live Internet Search, they are missing a huge component of Television 2.0 + 3.0. But again I’ve gone off track - All I wanted to say before i got buzzed on Tweetable.tv in this post was Please Tweetdeck can u create a 1 column version that integrates all my follower updates and matches to my search keywords + hashtags. If I could greatly reduce the font size + layout options so I can compress the screen real estate, then even when I get my 24″ intel imac - I will stick with tweetdeck. And if while u r there u wanted to integrate a google reader air app column, heck give me that friendfeed mini-window realtime update scrolling window and like Zebr a facebook option too.. And then I had one column with smaller font that had all my TV/etc twitter searches, friendfeed updates from each of the rooms, my twitter follower updates, google reader updated posts ideally by folder as i have what i tag “Supa-Spesh” folder which is my top 250 feeds : Then I could drop zebr, greader firefox, twhirl, twitterific, etc. K_thx_bye.

Nuthin 2do with TV but Love the Welder K24 - Best watch under $1k AUD @ $456Euro/$900AUD. By Uboat creator.

Sales Pitch at End

If you got this far, u either have too much time and are of no use to me, or for a much smaller % u got this far because we’re related hehe no u got this far as u r spending alot of yer days working on these issues, or u want to. I’m especially interested in the intersection of structured microblogging and television moving online becoming a more social experience.. Additionally, I think such aggregate data + P2p interactions leads perfectly to programming discovery + personalised recommendations So if u r a potential client, or handy developer.. well it would be a roll the sleeves up project I’d love to get involved. Or just leave a comment + tell me whether u think it’s a good business ? Services like stocktwits have proven a very solid business connecting dots between twitter and stocks, the same can apply to twitter and television. Suffice to say it’s a top 5 targeted project of mine, so PING ME already.

Will Boxee Integrate Twitter or Build it's Own Community ?