Word has gotten out that Apple is dropping its YouTube app from the next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 6. And the next version of the Macintosh OS X, Mountain Lion, includes Vimeo, but not YouTube, in the video sharing options. What’s more, last week, Hulu Plus dropped unannounced into Apple TV.
Clearly there are some big shifts going on regarding video and TV content on the web, most notably by Apple away from Google. But these are all just opening shots in the growing battle for the future of TV. The moves that Apple is making are setting the stage for app-enabled television experiences to become dominant among consumers.
The implications of this are huge—and complicated. When Apple opens up the Apple TV platform to developers and content distributors, the way will be clear for a multitude of new business models for how to capture and monetize viewership.
If Apple is going to create a true platform out of Apple TV, as I believe it will, the advertising-driven business models of the broadcast networks and the subscription + advertising models of the cable companies will exist side-by-side—and compete head-to-head—with new models.
Many of the ideas that have bubbled up for TV apps assume that viewers want to be “social” while they are watching, tweeting, posting to Facebook, watching what their “friends” are watching. For teenagers who text at the Thanksgiving table, this is probably a good guess, but I think it undersells what is really valuable about social media, what app-enabled TV can do and what most viewers most want.
I think what viewers most want is to know what to watch. Not just what is popular, but of all the possibilities, what they will most uniquely enjoy.
Shayndi Raice wrote a good overview of some new and soon-to-be-updated social TV apps in The Wall Street Journal. She describes the first generation of apps as focusing on checking in to real-time chats. One example of this approach is GetGlue, who found “That the ‘check-in’ never created enough critical mass to create a viable social TV community on its own.” The company is pushing their Facebook integration further and uses its “connect” feature to “show a scrolling calendar with the shows, movies and sports that users’ might like. It will show whether friends who use the app are watching the same show.” GetGlue’s business model hinges on “second screen” advertising that sends coordinated marketing messages to the user’s mobile devices while they watch. Will watching “Jersey Shore” make you hungry for a pizza?
Other notable upcoming apps, according to Raice, include Dijit, Peel and a soon-to-be-revamped TV Guide mobile. At best, these apps will not only curate what you can watch, but control your TV as well. GetGlue will soon be able to control DirectTV’s set-top boxes and Peel for Android (see image above) can currently launch shows on your TV, with iOS capabilities coming soon.
Each of these apps is looking for an edge, or something unique to sell.Sidecastr is an iPad app with their own “patent pending ACR (audio fingerprint based) system,” that recognizes the sound of the show you are watching so that it can synchronize relevant social commentary. This enables the app to time spoilers appropriately, and give you a “live” feel, even if you are “time shifting.”
But making all of the deals necessary to assure a really consistent experience across different devices, geographies and cable systems is a daunting task, and there are bound to be a lot of frustrated users at first. As Forrester Researchanalyst James McQuivey told the Journal, many of these start-ups will be takeover targets for the larger players, “It is much more likely that these vendors are building products that will be features tomorrow.”
The limited pool of initial users will seriously restrict the usefulness of these new apps, so the big players will have a huge advantage if they can program compelling experiences. One potential player that is not often discussed in this context is Twitter. Rumors, now squelched, about Apple buying a stake in the social network didn’t touch on any relationship with Apple TV, but I think there are some intriguing possibilities.
Lost Remote’s Natan Edelsburg interviewed Steven Brand of Sidecastr, who said, “We especially want to be viewed by the Twitter community as the ideal Twitter integrated 2nd screen app ‘purpose-built’ for watching TV.” Edelsburg wisely retorted, “Twitter is probably the ideal Twitter second screen app.” Especially now that Twitter is restricting its API, it will have the ability to easily do things that will be difficult for outside developers to achieve. For instance, Twitter could show you the content recommendations not only of the people you follow, but of the people they follow as well. In this way, building networks concentrically outward, Twitter could scale the data set that it pulls from to go with a given user and a given application.
Facebook can do similar things as well, but I think their case raises the issue of the difference between your “friends” and what I like to call your “content friends.” You may love your old high school buddies dearly, but you don’t necessarily care that they are watching. On the other hand, if William Gibsonactually watches TV, I might be very interested in what he’s choosing.
The “social-ness” of television is not just about your “friends,” but about the community of interests and affinities. There are all kinds of ways to get at those associations, and it will be job #1 for social TV apps to explore all of the ways to deliver relevant recommendations to viewers. Once television—through Apple TV, Google TV, Roku, Boxee, whatever—fully takes on the app model, the fight for home screen space will be intense. Just like Google search, whatever is on the the first page, or the first three pages, of a viewer’s home screen will be most of what they will watch. Some of those icons will be for specific content channels that the user is particularly interested in, like ESPN, Bravo or (ahem) Fox News. But there are all manner of curation schemes—data-driven, crowd sourced or expert-guided—that will compete for attention. Innovative start-ups that have access to the data sets of the big players will play a big role here, but so, too, will individual (or small group) curators who—like us bloggers—will develop followings based on the value they bring to their audiences.
It’s a really exciting time to enter this arena. One way or another, whether through Apple or Google, Netflixor Time Warner, these apps will proliferate and become a significant channel through which viewers decide what to watch and what else to do while watching. These apps will be social, yes, but in a much more capacious definition of that term than we now understand. The content, itself, is a social network.
