I am betting aggressively on the coming ubiquity of portable projection devices.
Not just because they’re cool. But because, as our lives become more digital, content will need to get out from the confines of a screen.
First, some background:
I took this class last semester at the MIT Media Lab called “Social TV”. Perhaps it was all those hours I spent as a teenager watching endless hours of television, but the class had a profound effect on the way I think about TV and media in general. I learned the term “three screens” – for television, computer and mobile – and spent a lot of time thinking about how the three-screen experience has changed the way we consume media.
The big question now is how to integrate those three screens in a way that is intuitive and seamless. No easy task. There have been a few attempts, but it seems to me that the timelines won’t align: by the time someone is aggressive enough to do deals with the telcos, MSOs AND the content providers, the technology itself will be so different that it might not matter. Technology moves fast; large “cruise ship” companies like Comcast move slow.
The fundamental problem with three-screen integration attempts is that the television model is, for the most part, still very bankable. People still watch a crapload of television and pay their service providers handsomely, on a monthly basis. So the MSOs have little motivation to indulge new models, and the content providers (especially powerful ones like ESPN, MTV, CNN, etc.) are scared to rock the boat, especially when it’s related to the companies that are writing them enormous checks every month.
As a result, recently I have moved away from thinking about integration. In some ways, I believe that the three screen model isn’t sustainable – maybe the screens are not meant to work in tandem, and instead are in a sort of battle for dominance. Problem is though, all three have very compelling pluses: TV has massive market penetration and usage, computers have the greatest capabilities, and mobile phones are with you 24/7.
Of these three, I think mobile phones will eventually win the battle. Look at laptops – they keep getting smaller and more portable, while mobile phones get smarter and more powerful. A phone most definitely can replace a computer, but a computer will never become a phone. Form factor is a big issue here as well. Perhaps that’s why there is so much excitement about the Apple Tablet – I now think of laptops as huge versions of the clamshell cell-phones of the mid 1990s. They’re bulky and not particularly intuitive, but the use of a laptop has become so ritualized at this point that I don’t think people notice any more.
If you buy the hypothesis that phones will eventually replace computers, which I do, then the real stumbling block is the display. It’s just too small for sharing.
This is the crux of my bet on mobile projection devices. The usages are endless, the technology is there and is awesome, and the battle that I believe mobile phones will eventually win is in full force. Perhaps this is the market opportunity I should pursue - I saw this video of Marc Andreessen on Business Insider talking about how to define the future, and he said you can see what’s coming in the near-term by hanging out at university labs. I am starting to see these devices everywhere. Perhaps this is worth examining further…
I was oh-so-innocently trying to learn about businesses that curate Twitter content, so I watched all 45 minutes of the Howard Lindzon and Fred Wilson chat on howardlindzon.com, hoping to get just a little bit of the secret-sauce behind StockTwits.
What I wasn’t expecting, though, was about 40 minutes in when Fred Wilson said: “This holiday season there will be Boxee boxes in the stores. So you can go to the store and get a Boxee box and you can take it home and connect it to your TV and you’re done.” (Though he did say later that Boxee will not be making the boxes).
This is amazingly awesome news for Boxee (and for me!).
Why? I see at least 7 reasons (this list started out with 3 FYI):
1. Differentiation from other online video platforms
Outside of YouTube and Hulu, there are a myriad of other ways to consume video online and a whole truckload more in development. By making the link between the computer and the television, Boxee is taking a huge risk (would you really want to go up against Hulu, the MSOs and a whole host of other large corporations?), but the potential upside is significant. I think true differentiation in the video space is extremely difficult right now and this could be the key for Boxee.
2. The UI gap between television and the internet has become, well, HUGE
People who spend the majority of their time on the internet get this look of disgust on their faces when talking about the state of television. It’s not that the next best UI for TV isn’t out there - from what I can tell, TV Guide did such a great job locking in the cable providers and patenting everything related to guide technology (including a “claim for generating a simple EPG grid with channels on one axis and times on the other”) that the pace of innovation has slowed significantly.
This has created, in a way, a perfect storm for a product like Boxee: alienated users, a battle between giants that doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere, and an enormous market ripening itself for widespread change.
3. Nothing says “Recession: Game Over” like a holiday rush on Best Buy for the hottest new electronic toy
What’s the competition this year? Windows 7? Please. The economy is starting to bounce, and what better symbolizes a return to consumption than the long line outside electronics stores on Black Friday? (Circuit City R.I.P.).
4. MSOs need a wake-up call
Henry Blodget’s article “Sorry, There’s No Way to Save the TV Business” in SAI last week summed up the situation quite well (so no need for me to say more here).
5. The future of television is not in widgets
I am pretty anti-widget when it comes to the future of television. I have no interest in seeing a sun in the corner of my screen when I’m watching Law and Order: SVU. I like Boxee’s app-driven model much better.
I know a lot of people are really into the Yahoo! widgets and there has been a lot of praise for the new Samsung TVs, but I’m not a huge fan.
The recent Boxee app development challenge is a great example of what can be done with the Boxee platform - photos, education, and news are just the beginning.
6. Boxee in its current state is too difficult to use with your TV and only sometimes compelling to use with your computer
Do I really use Boxee that much now? Nope. I love it, but for videos I find myself most often at Hulu, YouTube and Vimeo. The “pain point” is much sharper for television; online video is too slick and user-friendly, competition is vast and the video space in general is really crowded.
7. I am sick of paying for cable
Comcast, are you reading this? We’re breaking up. It pains me to pay $60/month so that I can scroll through those silly ads between every four listings in the guide software. I can’t stand staring at my remote and wondering what to do with all those buttons that I never seem to use. Anecdotally, it seems like the early adopter crowd is fed up and starting to unplug en masse. Here’s my guess on how the rest of the demo groups will shake out:
NOW - Early Adopters - Currently hacking together solutions that for the most part involve Mac Minis
1-3 Years - College Students - What do all dorm rooms have? Internet Access. Probably wireless. Cable TV is a pain in dorms, and colleges would love an IP solution that could just use the existing wireless
1-3 Years - Yuppies - The ones who always have to have the “latest and greatest”
4-6 Years - Moms - Once word gets out that you can look at baby photos through Flickr on your TV? Forget it.
5-7 Years - Everyone Else - Yeah, five years is a long time, but the MSOs are huge and the TV world moves slower than the internet.
Anyway, here’s hoping the Boxee set-top rumors will pan out this holiday season.
I have been intensely exploring the New York tech scene for a scant five days now (school’s out for summer!), so you can ONLY IMAGINE how intrigued I am by this week’s second-annual “Internet Week New York“.
In a genius move by the Mayor’s office, the city has crowdsourced the actual planning of the week’s events to the local technology scene. This is great for the city (less manpower required to pull off a week-long geekfest) and beneficial to curious folks trying to get a feel for the technology community in New York - analyzing the list of events gives a pretty thorough landscape of what New York can offer to digital dilettantes looking to enhance their knowledge of the internets.
Although there will be a solid group of out-of-towners around, I see this week as a by-NYC for-NYC event. That said, the paradox here is as follows: event organizers will likely put together an event that exhibits their strengths, meaning the events this week will serve to highlight and reinforce the strengths - which I see as content creation, advertising and investment - of the NYC tech community.
THE GOOD - Content Content Content.
If you believe “content is king” - and who doesn’t these days? - there will be ample opportunity to juice up your knowledge on content development and execution from the content capital of the universe. New Yorkers, old-media and new-media alike, respect the good stuff like nowhere else.
Check out content-related events here, here and here.
THE NOT-SO-GOOD - Where are the Developers?
There are few events that involve actually learning how to code and/or build stuff (exceptions here and here). From what I can tell, the best way to lock down job security if you work in print media/traditional advertising is to beef up your knowledge of the digital side. If you’re a content ninja, wouldn’t having a working knowledge of rails, php, python or even wordpress provide a huge advantage?
What I think Internet Week lacks are these “gateway” classes for the throngs of old-media types who are ready to embrace the future of digital media. If New York really wants to establish itself as a technology hub, there needs to be a REALLY low barrier to entry for people interested in actually learning to build new media.
So where are the coding parties? Please let me know - business students don’t usually get invited.
Larry Page says web users love “real-time” information. Television brainiacs see a future of all on-demand all the time. Even data mining is becoming more real-time.
People love new. New toys, new trends, new methods, new clothes. And the shift to a more real-time web plays into this well - it allows us to constantly quench our desire for “what’s new”.
Kevin Kelleher posits that the advantage of the real-time web is its ability to enable discovery as opposed to results. I agree - guided discovery is a totally awesome part of real-time applications. I worry though, that this constant reinforcement of the new marginalizes even further the opportunity to discover anything that’s *not* new.
Historical discovery was hard enough before the real-time web. When flipping through channels on television, I would stumble on old shows by chance and watch them. Now with all on-demand content consumption, I only watch what I want. I would read the encyclopedia yearbooks in my living room to learn about years before my time, though now, I barely touch websites that don’t add new content every single day.
Old content on the web gets buried WAY fast. Sure, chronological archiving helps, but the trend toward real-time content delivery has made it possible to avoid old content almost completely - one doesn’t stumble upon dated stuff in the same way.
I hope that the idea of discovery on the web doesn’t become synonymous with new, as often some of the most satisfying and interesting finds are the ones you missed the first time around.
My relationship with TV is starting to remind me a lot of my relationship with AOL around 1999. The applicable buzzword here is “walled garden” - after years of an insane love affair with AOL (because yes, we ALL had one) I found I was only using the browser + AIM and was sick of the other features that mostly served to slow down the browser. I quickly stopped using AOL altogether - though my parents continued to pay for it until 2007.
Lately, I have felt the same way about TV. Perhaps it’s the Social Television class I’m taking at the MIT Media Lab, but I find myself more and more frustrated with my TV. I’m annoyed that I have to settle for whatever is on and I find that the enjoyment I used to get from watching TV is nearly matched online. I say “nearly” because the internet still lacks the ability to replicate the “lean-back” experience that one gets from watching television.
The relationship between MSOs and content providers is what I like to call “cushy”. MSOs have deals with each network and pay the networks to carry their content. What I’m not quite sure about is if this number is a flat rate or a percentage based on the number of subscribers. If it’s a flat rate, then I think the MSOs will stick around a lot longer and deal with lower profits in exchange for continued market domination. If it’s a percentage of subscribers that’s a better sign for the rest of us - the content providers will start getting less and less cash as people unplug their cable and might choose to entertain options to provide content through other platforms.
I think about trends in technology the same way I think about neighborhood gentrification. There’s a very specific time-line with tangible indicators. Example: my mother, a fourth-generation Flatbush Brooklynite, told me that no one would ever want to live in “the dump” that was Williamsburg. Now it’s almost as expensive as Manhattan. The series of events went something like this: first the artists and musicians moved in because it was cheap, then the young just-graduated-but-still-poor yuppies came for the cool music, art, and coffee shops and they paved the way for the Booz Allen consultants who are now snapping up those fancy new condos.
I believe the same thing will happen with television. Early adopters are sick of the walled garden - they are unplugging their cable and buying Apple TVs, Rokus and are excited for Boxee to come out with its own set-top box.
Once Comcast, TW, Cox, etc. start to see enough of a drop in subscriptions they’ll pick fights with the content providers and some of the stronger content providers could start offering their content a la carte across multiple platforms (and I mean ALL their content - not just what’s currently online). Content providers with huge followings will be the big winners here - MTV, ESPN, HBO, Food Network, etc. Should they choose to offer their content directly to their customers these networks could potentially rake in even more money than they’re currently getting from the MSOs.
People will get to the point where they will be willing to pay for Hulu. Despite the fact that Gen. Y-ers love “free” we’re also pragmatic enough to know that one has to pay for quality.
For now, though, I am telling Comcast in September that I don’t want cable TV anymore. I’ll probably pay just as much for internet (gotta love bundling) but that’s not the point - it’s symbolic: I’m breaking out of yet another walled garden.
