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Friday, August 14, 2009

Inaugurating Social TV

Hi all, been out of blogging loop for some reason these didn't get posted so here goes catch up.
This ariticle about social tv is discussing the relationship between tv watching and Facebook. What it is really pointing out is how the new media allows people to watch and comment together in a new way, and that this behavior can now be observed more easily than before. Before we had lots of people watching at the same time, used the Nielsons to tell us how many and those folks talked on the phone.So what we have is new way of pople doing what thay always do shareexperinces and talk about them.Now we need to figure out what this new mode of sharing means.


Inaugurating Social TV - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Inaugurating Social TV





CNN’s live streaming of the
inauguration
next to a feed from Facebook is a powerful demonstration of how
television can use social media and an equally powerful demonstration of what
Facebook can do for various Web sites.


As Jenna Wortham wrote,
all sorts of Web sites and mobile services are using the inaugural festivities
to show off their latest features. There are lots of places you can see streams
from what is happening in Washington, and many sites allow you to read what
people are thinking about the day.


The CNN site combines the two. On the left is CNN’s video streaming service:
A choice between an anchored newscast and feeds from three locations in
Washington. (It’s not CNN’s on-air talent, but an Internet-only anchor team.) On
the right, is a news feed from Facebook. If you are a Facebook member, by
default you see a stream of status updates from your friends. You also have a
chance to read a stream of all the status updates from everyone watching the CNN
feed.


The effect reinforces the experience of a moment that is shared with the
world, and especially your friends. There is something about seeing a person you
know commenting about what it is like in the crowds on the National Mall in
Washington (my friends are all stuck not moving), that is a great deal more
vivid than simply seeing cameras panning over the masses.


What CNN is doing here in some ways isn’t very hard. It is simply weaving
together ideas and technologies that have been in the air for some time.
Twitter’s politics
page
, created for the debates, showed how interesting a live stream of short
opinions can be. Facebook has been building out its Facebook Connect service
that brings your existing roster of friends to other sites. CNN is simply
bringing these ideas together.


A quick word to note the prescience of Barry Schuler, who was the president
of AOL in 2000. He tried to introduce
AOL TV
, a set-top box modeled after Web TV, that was meant to let you chat
with your AOL Instant Message buddies as you watched TV. AOL TV flopped, of
course, as no one wanted a separate set-top box to connect a slow dial-up
Internet connection to their TV. But in a world of broadband streaming, where
many people now have a list of friends on Facebook or other social networks, the
kernel of Mr. Schuler’s vision has proved appealing.


Whatever else the Obama administration brings to the pressing issues of our
day, on the minor matter of television, I think we are going to be seeing a lot
more experiences that blend mass media and personal media like the CNN-Facebook
mashup.