superbowl – LIVEdigitally

This is the image you get if you do a google image search for "world record".

So the Grammy’s unsurprisingly (I will explain why I say it that way in a moment) set all sorts of records for social TV. Just like the Superbowl did a few weeks ago. Just like the ___ did a few weeks before that. I call this a big yawner, but first, some definitions:

Appointment TV: a TV show where the majority of the audience is watching live. The 5 primary examples are Reality Shows (American Idol, Amazing Race, etc), News (CNN, uh… CNN Headline News? I don’t know, televised news is just propaganda in my opinion anyway – but I digress), Sports (mostly hockey, particularly the Canadiens), Events (Oscars, Royal Weddings, etc), and “big episodes” of scripted television (Lost Series Finale, Game Of Thrones Season 2 Premiere, etc).
Catch-up TV: everything that doesn’t fit into Appointment TV above. Literally. Every “typical” episode of every “typical” show is in the catch-up category, which means there is no particular driver for someone to watch it anywhere near to real-time. This is why I’m still on Weeds season 5, Entourage season 6, etc, and will catch up on things like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and others whenever I find the desire.
Social TV: let’s do this SAT-style. Social TV : TV :: Social Media : Web. In other words, it’s a nebulous mess of “stuff you use things like Facebook and Twitter to do while watching TV”. It includes hashtags, check-ins, second screen, likes, and is a big jumbly undefined thing. And I have no problem with that.

So why do I say things like “unsurprisingly” and “yawner”? Because this is a burgeoning activity. We are at the very earliest stage of people using second screens whilst (yup, whilst) watching TV. I myself tweeted a couple of times during the Superbowl (really during the ads):

This is an infinite increase over last year’s SuperBowl. I didn’t watch the Grammy’s, but had I, I likely would’ve tweeted. And this isn’t just about me, it’s a pretty universal trend. Why? Because Twitter, the platform we are using to measure Social TV as a concept, is still growing. So anything measuring a growing service with growing use and calling the outcome “record-setting” is really just fulfilling an exercise in redundancy. Every new instance of appointment TV tweeting will outpace all previous instances, until Twitter stops growing.

But really, that’s all just a sidepoint. My issue, concern, and question, is whether or not there’s any value whatsoever in any of this for catch-up TV. Do I care about tweets someone sent during an episode of House from last year? Or last week? Or even 10 minutes ago? I don’t, and I don’t understand why someone else would either. Nor do I care about what someone is watching right now unless I too can (and should) watch the same thing, at the same time. Heck, I hate seeing the promos to text in my vote (to Top Chef, my guilty pleasure show) when I’m seeing an episode 4 months after it aired.

I don’t see a solution to this conundrum. To be clear, I’m not questioning will social media impact TV behaviors – that will certainly happen. Further, as evidence is mounting that catch-up TV is growing steadily and will inevitably outpace real-time/appointment TV, I see the window somewhat shrinking for what’s currently called “Social TV.” But that shouldn’t really surprise anyone, as it’s such an early stage in the evolution of TV. And if you think about it in evolutionary terms, TV is just learning about making fire now, and the wheel is probably a few years away…

According to Lost Remote, social media was en fuego during the Super Bowl this year. Bluefin Labs contributed to these stats, and found over 12 million “social media comments” during the game. Another element Lost Remote tracked were the plurality of Social TV Second Screen Apps in play:

The best second-screen experience: To start things off, we checked into the game on GetGlue, Miso,IntoNow, Shazam, ConnecTV, Umami, Foursquare and Viggle. Ok, that’s overkill, but we wanted to give them a spin on the biggest social TV event of the year. For starters, GetGlue sailed passed its all-time check-in, counting over 100,000 before halftime and 150,000 total for the game, 3X its all-time record (the company doubled its servers for the Super Bowl.) We’re let you know of other second-screen stats when we get them.

Now that doesn’t include the “official” Super Bowl app, NBC Sports, or a few other options. But overall, I’m see a glass is half empty scenario myself.

The problem was in the experiences. I tweeted a couple of times during the game, by using the Twitter app, which was native and easy to do. The thought of launching another app, just to get something that would enable be to tweet never even crossed my mind. In reality, most of these apps actually got in the way of the experience. And yes, while there was tons of tweeting and updates occurring, I’d lay down a strong bet most of this was about people posting, not reading what others were posting.

I also found the Super Bowl ads highlighted two major flaws in the ad experience. Shazam got a lot of pre-game buzz for all their ad partners. Sounds cool in theory, but the experience is just plain lousy. First, the commerical starts airing. Then, at some point in the middle of the ad a little Shazam logo appears somewhere on the screen (I only noticed it a handful of times personally). At this moment, the viewer must grab their phone, turn it on, unlock it, switch to the Shazam app, and then – and this is important – get everyone in the room to be quiet for 7-10 seconds. Great in theory, but this is not a good experience for any user.

The second was a QR code which displayed on screen. This in my eyes was even worse than Shazam, since QR codes require the user to have a QR app, which is just too obtuse for the average viewer.

worst. crossword. ever.

Compare either the Shazam or QR experience to having a simple URL onscreen. Is it really easier to go through all the hassle and end up on the Honda website, or just tell the user to go to honda.com? Plus, by obfuscating the simple methods, advertisers lose brand reinforcement AND are busy handing over the experience to a third party. Similarly, when it comes to social experiences, is it to a consumers’ advantage to launch an app just to get an update into Twitter or Facebook, or to just use the native ones?

These experiences have come a long way, and are offering exciting potential for the future of TV and second screens. But so far, we’re clearly at the infancy of what the consumer can use to really “enhance” a TV offering. I hope some or many of these offerings will improve over the years, and really create a better experience, not one that makes us work harder just to watch TV.

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