The New TV Apps Will Be Social, And A Whole Lot More
Reblogged from Forbes, by Anthony Wing Kosner
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…
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… 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… [Full Story]
