even more notes on google tv and twitter

I had a chance to play with Google TV this past weekend at Best Buy, where there was a helpful blue-shirted employee doing a great job explaining the Sony set's benefits. Or, at least how the search function worked.

He didn't really understand how the apps worked, and couldn't really explain why I'd want to use them, and so I said "well, let's check out the Twitter one." Here's the roadblock we hit...

Now, I wasn't really up for logging into Twitter in the middle of Best Buy with my personal account...so we didn't get past this screen. But this shouldn't have been the first screen.

Twitter recently spent a bunch of cycles improving the first time user experience -- especially for users that have yet to make the leap into the registration process -- so that they can get a taste of what's available on Twitter without having to make the leap. If ever there were a use case where the logged out state could be interesting and valuable, it's with a device like Google TV.

Google TV shouldn't just be another Twitter client, it should be a contextual Twitter client. See that picture-in-picture frame right there? The device knows what we're watching right now, and so why not make the default view a real time search for tweets related to the show we're watching? (It would be our own personal #vma display.) And if there's not enough context to display real-time context, then take advantage of our history with the device. It knows what shows we've searched for, what movies we've watched -- the default screen should present streams of tweets based on that information, along with recommended bundles of accounts to follow that would grease the funnel through the registration flow.

But, speaking of that registration flow... I used the first person plural in that last paragraph on purpose. I don't have the data behind this, but I've got to believe that an awful lot of television watching happens with other people in the room. Would I even want to sign in to Google TV with my Twitter account? Why not my wife's? Or my daughter's? Fighting over the remote is one thing, fighting over personalized display of information layered on top of the show everyone in the room is watching is another.

Somewhere back in 2008, I silenced a debate about LOST spoilers with the simple declaration that real fans watch. Twitter's in a great position to help broadcast television become relevant again, by providing a communal experience (nb: potentially distinct from a "community" experience) layered on top of live television. But there's more work to do...

Comments

[Matt Jacobs]

Fighting over the remote is one thing, fighting over personalized display of information layered on top of the show everyone in the room is watching is another.

Netflix has a similar problem. The Roku and many of the other devices only let you attach one account to your device. Don't they know my wife, me, and my non-existant kids all have very different queues?

This is just further proof that someone is poised to make a killing in the living room when they figure this stuff out.

[Michael Sippey]

I like the idea of you having Netflix queues for your non-existent kids...here are the movies you WILL watch, when you get old enough. You could program the entire first 15 years of their life, leaving just enough room in their screentime schedule for new Pixar movies.

[Martin Atkins]

I have this very problem with my Roku. The Netflix account on my Roku is mine, but my girlfriend often watches shows on it that I'm not interested in. On the other hand, the Pandora app is using her account, so I mess her up every time I want to listen to some music.

There was some discussion about this on the Roku forums. The consensus from the user community was that the device should have system-wide profiles that you can switch between. I'm not sure that's the right answer, since there are often multiple people in the room when the TV is in use, and you'd need to make an arbitrary decision about whose Netflix account gets "credit" for watching that show. The best suggestion the Roku staffers had for now was to buy multiple devices and use one each, which I'm sure they'd love but there's only just so much space next to my TV and only just so many input jacks on my TV.

It's interesting to note how things have come full-circle with user personalization: in the early days of personal computing families often shared a user account (or used an OS with no concept of distinct user accounts) and found some way to compromise on the settings in that user account. Then desktop operating systems introduced multiple user accounts to solve that problem, which I would argue was one of the enablers for widespread use of web-based applications since it enabled an individual to have an identity on the computer.

Mobile devices returned to the single user model but they lend themselves well to having one per person. It seems that this first generation of on-TV app experiences is trying to follow the model that has proven itself on mobile, but we clearly need some new model here that allows for the fuzzy nature of entertainment consumption in the family room. I reckon this is a blocker for widespread adoption of this technology by anyone except single folks living alone.

[Matt Jacobs]

Mart: I think we should all have Xbox Kinects and Netflix should know who is in the room and give everyone credit for the show. And Pandora should find the intersection of everyone's tastes.