Hurricane Gustav Ushers In Interactive Television

Photo: Steve Garfield.com


I was expecting EQAL the creators of Lonely Girl 15 to create a show that would bring Interactive TV to the masses but it looks like it was Hurricane Gustav that made Interactive TV happen on a large scale last night with CNN's Rick Sanchez and Twitter.

Sure there's American Idol's text messaging and email and Facebook and yes using those platforms are interactive with TV shows but they don't have a back channel like the instant micro blogging site Twitter does. Twitter is a service where viewers/users can see what other viewers/users are talking about even if a TV show that is using it doesn't feature a user's comments.

Now it wasn't a perfect situation last night with CNN and Twitter. I was waiting for the ever overtaxed Twitter to go down every time CNN gave out the Twitter URL on-air and indeed I did see the Twitter "fail whale" (When Twitter crashes, users see the "fail whale" error message.) a couple of times but Twitter came back and kept working. Overall Rick Sanchez and his producer did a great job of using Twitter to interact with their viewers by using Twitter spending their time reading tweets from viewers on the ground near the storm and online humanitarians like Andy Carvin who spent the weekend setting up the Gustav Information Center and used Twitter to get the word out.

Moving forward with Twitter I think that with the proliferation of live video services like Ustream, Qik, Stickam and other services we are going to see new Interactive Television Shows incubate at speeds traditional TV development could never move at and based on last night I see News organization like CNN, Fox, MSNBC and others becoming potential investors or even buyers of Twitter.

If you are a producer considering creating an Interactive Television show you should take a close look at using Twitter with a Live Video streaming services today because your competition already has.

When Will Madison Ave Meet Digital Vine?

Tomorrow at the Beverly Hills Hotel there will be a very special event put on by Ad Age called Madison and Vine. It's an event that has been taking place for several years where Madison Avenue Advertising people and Hollywood types come together but for some reason it hasn't yet cross pollinated yet into the world of social media. (There are only Two of us on Upcoming that are going and I can't find it listed on Facebook.)

That said, Tomorrow I will be a bee.

MySpace, Is It Your Space?

When I see videos from MySpace, like the one above, climbing the charts in popularity I think, "I should post some videos on MySpace." Then I think about the MySpace login and the look of the MySpace page and the look of so many MySpace pages and I talk MySelf out of it.

I know a lot of people have MySpace accounts. I know a lot of people use MySpace. I only know a handful of 25 - 30 year old actresses who use MySpace on a regular basis. All the cool video kids and even the not so cool business folks I know spend their time sending messages from Twitter, Pownce and of course Facebook and even Linkedin. Hey, it could be because I just don't pay attention to my MySpace account because I don't find the interface inviting but I still wonder... Do any of you, use MySpace on a regular basis?

Facebook Song

I attended a Facebook Developers Garage a week a go or so and met some really cool people from all kinds of Web 2.0 companies who were all looking for Facebook developers. Even Facebook had a guy working the room looking to hire Facebook developers. Everyone wants to make money on Facebook’s API

People are making new applications for Facebook every day and it’s already hard to cut through the clutter of bad Facebook apps. But the one take away I got from the Facebook Meetup was that if you build an application for Facebook it needs to be something that your friends can use to find out things about you and that you can use to find out things you want to know about your friends.

Stay focused on that and you can build a Facebook app that will make you money.