Interactive TV, #FTW!!
I conducted an experiment at the end of last summer, to see how long I could go without a TV. I found out the answer is indefinitely. TV has become irrelevant – or at least TV as we know it. We are consuming online video content at rates faster than the archaic flat screen thing in the middle of the living room that doesn’t hook up to the internet can compete, and furthermore our voracious appetite for interaction has become something that the entertainment industry cannot ignore.
Oh yeah btw, I write exactly like I talk. For example right now, I’m picturing you all like my friend Joe, who borrowed my TV dinner tray set in 1995, and has yet to return it. Talking above people’s heads is super lame. It does nothing for my own ego, and ends up getting you no where, so yeah …
Go to MTV.com – and click on Jersey Shore. MTV is doing some crazy, and innovative things with social media that I think is just too rad to be ignored.
Here is a link:
http://www.mtv.com/videos/jersey-shore-season-2-ep-7-sleeping-with-the-enemy/1647240/playlist.jhtml
Look up at the top, it allows you to post on Twitter, Facebook, and even gives you the ability to embed the feed into your own website. And the bottom? A full listing of chat rooms, and polls for you to be able to comment with other people watching it as the same time as you. SO, SO, SOOOO COOLLL!!!!!!! MTV is already ahead of the curve in where the trend is going. To break it down for you in as simple of terms as possible – say good bye to one way interaction with our entertainment. In the very, very, very near future the new standard for multimedia consumption will be an entirely two way street. The more engaging shows can become, and the greater sense of a community it provides, the better it will translate to the online medium. We want to become mini evangelists for your show, movie, or whatever. We all have our own platform to advertise on thanks to social media – so let us! But bottom line, it takes two to tango, and “following or finding you” is great, but now what!!!
Ads will become interactive too. Ever watch Hulu? I love how they’ll display ads for some sort of something, and have the website at the end of the commercial – yet give you no option to click. I can obviously see how that didn’t work with TV, but why not the internet!?!? I am already sitting, right here – make that a workable URL to take me to your site, capturing an interested buyer. I am not at all going to remember your website after about the next act of the show comes back, but if you allow it to open up in a new window, I will certainly minimize it until I am done watching. Dude, can you imagine the conversion rates?!?! Nutsooooo!!!!
What I’m curious about though, is why are crowds like Miso, and Glue not jumping on that trend? I know FourSquare and MTV have totally like made hot sweet lovin, but I saw no integration in their current platform for checkins. WHYYYY NOTTT!!!!!! Nerds love their checkins. And oh yeah, by checking in, you’re encouraging the engagement in social media, and creating an ad for your show to appear in the newsfeed and twitter feeds of who knoowwsss how many people. I literally feel like some days my head is going to explode. SO MUCH OF THIS IS JUST STARING THESE PEOPLE IN THE FACE, AND THEY HAVE NO IDEA!!!!!!!!!! Josh Harris, from We Live In Public, wasn’t that far off – he just didn’t see the timing of it. The time is now!!! Gone are the days of the big studios, and big networks. It’s a rebirth, the early bird is certainly getting the worm … and this is yet another chapter in “the greatest time to be alive.”
#NuffSaid
