What is needed for a good TV application and how Google TV can help it

Despite what I wrote yesterday about my reservations regarding the Google TV, I do believe it can emerge as a great TV platform. But it need to focus more on what makes an application to be good on TV and less on bringing the web to the TV .

A good stand alone application (not widget) for TV must be:

1. Have TV optimized interface and TV only features
2. Content discovery is for dummies (ideally – content is already discovered and arranged when you sit in front of the TV)
3. Not requires text input (or it is limited to a bare minimum)
4. Entertaining
5. Video rich
6. Clickless
7. Highly personalized
8. Have multiple family members configurations with a single 2 or 3 digits code if needed

Example of good TV application is Netflix Watch Instantly that comes on one of the Netflix enabled devices. Everything about it is just right and meets all the criteria above.

Optimizing web site for TV isn’t enough. Take a look at YouTube. On a computer or mobile screens YouTube is the king and almost everything is right about it. But for TV it would need more than just optimization such as XL version of the site .

A peek at nowmov gives an idea of how different and better a TV-ready version of the YouTube might be. Definitely it is not an optimization of the YouTube site, but rather taking the YouTube content and presenting it completely differently, making the whole experience really entertaining and clickless. While I wouldn’t mind more personalization in the nowmov along with constant learning of my viewing tastes to make it even better for me, the idea is great and portable to the TV screen.

There is a whole set of applications that people try to port to TV. Think about status update on one of your social networking sites. What would be your first reaction when there is a message that your friend has a birthday? Right, writing him “Happy birthday to you! Wish you all the best”. No problem, sure, but wait, where is the remote, how on earth it got under the couch? Heck, why it does not write? Oh, no, I misspelled “birthday”, all over again… Not sure many people would do it on TV; probably most will retreat to the phones or laptops, which defeats the whole purpose of having this application on the TV.

People care less about the software platform on the TV but about what applications they have on it and how well these applications are adopted for the TV screen. Not every good web application will automatically be a good TV application.

When we sit in from of a computer, the most important questions are “what” and “where”. But when we finally relax on a couch to watch some TV, we usually would have an idea of what we want to watch, and the most important question will be “how”. Thus the search is not the most important thing for the TV.

Unlike “what and “where” the “how” question is mostly application specific (look at Netflix, YouTube XL and nowmov). If Google TV will leverage their strength in helping to solve the “How” it can be a winning proposition for consumers.

Google is in a best position in the world to create a TV platform that can address the right issues of creating a good native TV application. With its level of personalization, knowledge of what and how we do it might offer to applications developers something that other platforms will never be able to do.

Why Web Does Not Make Sense on TV

This week was very rich for the TV world. It started with GigaOm report about how fast TV apps market will explode and continued with Google I/O conference announcements of Google TV. And I don’t buy both.

What Google Ignores with Google TV

Let me start with a statement – Web does not make sense on TV. I know - it’s quite an opposite of what Google says.

It’s been proven times again and again – first with the WebTV, than with HTPCs. While you can always find a bunch of enthusiasts that will adopt whatever new cool thing is, it will be difficult to convince the rest of the world that Web-on-TV makes sense, as they denied it in the last 15 years.

How often and for how long would you want to work with your remote? Just for the sake of exercise, take any remote and try to type an imaginary text (even with your TV turned off) – will you still be in that comfortable lean back, foot on the table position?

Nobody can beat Google in the search, neither on computer nor on mobile. And in both areas search is the king for everything. It’s just different environment with completely different requirements and habits.

Typing in a search box on the TV oftentimes requires several additional searches:

• Search for the remote (under the couch, on the TV stand, in hands of the kid, under your butt, on the kitchen counter because it was on the tray)
• Search for the paper towel or napkin to wipe off this sandwich oil from the fingers (you do eat in front of the TV, don’t you?)
• Search for the person who will go and fetch the remote (from wherever it is found) and is also ok or comfortable with all this clicking on it
• Search for the reading glasses to be able to find the right buttons. It’s different to push the next channel, volume or even digits on the keypad than to type on the small full QWERTY remote.

Web TV failed not because it wasn’t a good product , but because people really weren’t bought into this “better” web on TV concept. Don’t do better web for TV. Do what makes sense on TV.

General web does not make sense, specific applications designed for consumption on the TV do.

And that only one aspect of how difficult is to people to adopt web-on-TV concept, without even considering the whole complexity of the ecosystem and other powerful players in the field and their stakes (operators, studios, content providers, manufactures, retailers, middleware and chipset vendors, ISPs, etc.).

That’s why I believe this new initiative of Google TV will have a hard time to succeed.

TV Apps Market – how big the opportunity is?

3 days ago GigaOm published their report on TV applications, TV Apps: Evolution from Novelty to Mainstream. In particular, they predicted that TV apps market will grow to almost $2B in the 4 year from virtually zero this year (estimated sales in 2010 are $10M).

While I love GigaOm for their excellent content, this one just didn’t fit well. That growth is a huge bet.
First, it does not make sense from the perspective of the whole ecosystem. While connected TVs are really a cool thing and seems to be an industry direction, in order to achieve these numbers 4 things should happen first:

1. These TVs should be manufactured with more than few default applications preloaded to them
2. These TVs should be sold to the consumers
3. The right set of right applications should be developed
4. These consumers should decide whether to (1) use these applications and (2) pay for them

While (3) and (4) seem obvious, in a context of the TV they have a different meaning, which I will explore later.

The same GigaOm reported just 4 month ago that the Apple AppStore generates about $250M a month, making it $3B a year. Comparing the whole ecosystem for apps on iPhone, Apple brand, existing app market before the emergence of the Apple, globalization of the iPhone, and most importantly, a perfect sense for mobile applications, it makes it a little stretching to assume the TV apps market is in the same ground field. This is my quick sanity check for this prediction.

What Applications Are For TV?

Being in the TV applications space for the last few years, I’m familiar with many solutions and technologies related to the field, from widgets to specific applications and devices. Playing with many of them, I developed a simple set of criteria to decide whether an application is a good fit or not.

I will explore this in my next post.

My thoughts about Facebook privacy issues

I’m on Facebook, and many of my friends are on in too. When I decided to join, I sort of told myself that whatever I want to share with general public would be there, and if something I want to keep private I just will not publish it on the Facebook.

Facebook “friends” come and go. Not every friend there is my real friend. Some are friends, some are just interesting online personas that I befriended there because I like their content, but whom I never met in person.

How much private information I want to share with such people, or even with many people that I know and used to either work or hang out? Well, generally it would not much beyond already known information.

I post, share, like, befriend, comment, follow, become fan and do whatever I do on Facebook and it is clear that any key stroke or mouse click I made aren’t private anymore.

I’m there because I want to be there, because my friends are there and because I like seeing their updates, posts or stuff they find interesting and sometimes I comment or re-share. And eventually all this might to be open.

But this is my decision and when I decided to join Facebook I knew that whatever I put there one way or another is public. The old proverb says that if more than two people know a secret it’s not a secret anymore.

We at eMazeU are big believers in a need to keep some things privately or to share them only with a close circle of people (of course this applies mostly to videosharing and photosharing, as this is a content of eMazeU). That’s how eMazeU works and what we promote extensively. Read our blog post about privacy or our list of benefits our solution brings and one of which is complete privacy of shared content.

There are many ways to keep things private if you want, Facebook just isn’t one of them and never been. But isn’t that one of the things we actually like in Facebook?

Launch of eMazeU DivvyTV

We are launching eMazeU DivvyTV – http://www.eMazeU.com/product. Last week was among the most sleepless weeks in a very long time. But also it was filled with a lot of great fun.

We are launching just in time for the Mother’s Day, almost at the 90th minute (if you know the soccer term), and hope our customers will have a chance to buy the DivvyTV for their moms.

eMazeU DivvyTV is really a simple video mailbox on TV, and everyone feels comfortable using it. With eMazeU DivvyTV you will enjoy friends and family videos and photos sent directly to your TV, and have real-life experience seeing your loved ones so close up. Check out the movie.

Hope you enjoy the clip, browse the site and tell us what you think. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Here it starts…

My Most Devoted Twitter Follower

Every brand today needs to be on Twitter. Whether it's you, your business or your company.

I do not have an account yet, and soon plan to open. Despite that, I could claim leadership in some of the Twitter categories: I have the world youngest and most devoted Twitter follower. Judge yourself.

First Exposure

Last Friday was significant day in eMazeU history. We put our first version of the site online (http://www.emazeu.com/) to start exposure to search engines,allow pre-registration and receive feedbacks earlier on before official start of sales.

The product can always be better – more features, more robust, etc. But our current beta users really love it in its first version. It stands out in its simplicity – I believe this is one of the easiest ways to enjoy your friends and family content on your TV. So, what might be a reason not to start selling it? This realization occurred to me later than it should. We could start real sales few months ago. But better late than never…

With eMazeU you receive your friends and family videos and photos directly on your TV, without connecting in to the computer. Our product creates a new level of video sharing experience. There is no more fun to watch your and your friends and family videos than on your TV. And it has the easiest interface both for sharers and for receivers. So easy that my parents are using it without any problem, and they aren’t best friends with technology (http://igorchirashnya.blogspot.com/2010/02/to-make-your-parents-happy-do-startup.html).

In my family we use eMazeU in two ways: first we have eMazeU device connected to our TV. All my friends and family send their videos and photos directly to our TV. The experience is just great – you cannot even compare to what you have on a PC. We used to receive a lot of Picasa and Flickr albums, but mostly we watched them as thumbnails: who has patience to view somebody’s vacation?

But now we are hypnotized by the big TV screen when we receive their content, we feel them and their moments as close to the reality as it possibly might be. We watch their content again and again; it is like watching a movie with actors you personally know, love and care of.

And many of our friends and family have our product as well, and we share tons of our videos and photos with them directly to their TVs. No more YouTube, FlipShare, Picasa. Yes, these all are great products. But once it comes to the simplicity of sharing and watching from one end, to the great lifelike TV size experience from the other – eMazeU stands out.

Our goal was to create the most simple and convenient way to share videos and photos with people you care about, let them enjoy our videos in their living rooms, on their big screen TVs. I hope we succeeded to create such product. That’s what our current users tell us.

Please visit us at http://www.eMazeU.com. The site is still under construction, but you can pre-register and we will notify you when sales will start. The product itself is ready and the only thing that is left is to complete the site, which we plan to do in the next few weeks.

And of course, any suggestion and ideas are welcome and much appreciated!

Beware Facebook on a TV

Yesterday I had an interesting discussion about connected-TVs which make big news these days, and internet applications for them. I argued that while Facebook and Twitter sell the TV in stores, actual using them makes less sense, since posting comments to status updates, news feeds, photo and video sharing is quite difficult due to an awkward TV text input, and this is among most important features of such apps.

Agree, my business partner said, I also don’t want to show my Facebook in the living room. There is a lot of stuff on it that I prefer to keep away from the family’s eyes. If one of my friends published something inappropriate, I would rather try to avoid sharing it with my family, which is a more difficult on a TV than on laptop.

This instantly reminded me my personal experience that I shared with him. I’m a friend on the Facebook with some LA entrepreneur who happened to also be a super model. She is shockingly beautiful, exactly what you would expect from an LA model.

As part of our product we developed connectivity to the Facebook. It works quite simple – you choose your friends and our application sends their content to your eMazeU-enabled device, so you would be able to watch their photo albums directly on your TV without a need to log-in to the Facebook.

One day I was testing the application and chosen few names from the list of my Facebook friends. Her name was on top as it starts with “A”, and I checked her. Surely enough she had an amazing swimsuit album which went directly to my TV. I was looking at the server logs to see that everything was working correctly, not expecting that innocent “Photo 1” till “Photo 86”, as it was recorded, would require some explanation later.

When my wife came home, she went directly to the TV because “New Content Arrived” lights were on, and she watched the whole bikini album of 86 astonishing pictures. A serious explanation was in due. Showing server logs seemed too complicated at the moment, so I improvised.

”Honey, we develop a new service on the TV using our platform: one click purchase. As you can see, while watching a new collection of goods, swimsuits in this case, you can order any garment you want with just one click. Which one do you like, dear?” Not sure she bought it, but the evening was saved.

Indeed, sometimes it is better to enjoy your Facebook in a quiet solitude, even if your wife has a great sense of humor.