LiveHive Systems on Tuesday announced a major update to its Facebook app, tvClickr, which lets users interact with each other on Facebook as they watch a program live on television.
tvClickr’s premise is relatively simple: A group of the app’s users get online just as their favorite show starts. During the show, they’ll be able to converse about what’s going on, make predictions about what will happen next, answer trivia questions about the show, and engage in opinion polls in real-time. Unlike many apps, it’s not tied to a user’s friends though, so everyone using the app during the episode will be able to get in on the action together. The more you play, the higher your show IQ goes up, which eventually leads to prizes for those that perform the best for each show.
So far, tvClickr supports about 30 primetime shows, including House and Dog the Bounty Hunter, but the company promised that more shows will be coming soon. In order to make the polls and questions relevant, the company has a command center that’s populated by people who update the service as something new happens during the shows.
In an attempt to turn a profit with the app, tvClickr features context-sensitive ads, which change based on what’s going on in the show. For example, if you’re watching Dog the Bounty Hunter and Dog starts using an iPod, the ads will be changed to something promoting iPods or Apple itself.
If you want to try tvClickr out tonight, it will offer its service for House, 90210, Fringe, Big Brother 10, Privileged, and ECW as the shows air.
Who the hell watches live TV??? I don’t even watch sporting events live anymore!
@Adam: I came here to post that.
Sounds neat - since Facebook launched, basically all the big players in the TV vertical have been trying to figure out how to intersect social networking with live TV… this sounds like it might be the ticket. It’s a totally different problem to solve than making social networking work with web videos in a YouTube type form factor. Will check it out tonight.
@Adam @Matt You Tivo’ed or otherwise the Superbowl!? Losers.
Acutally, I don’t waste my time watching overpaid steriod junkies play a game. I’d much prefer something that needs a little thought.
That being said, if I did watch the Superbowl, during the game I’d watch the game, and during commercials…ummmm well there are some pretty funny ones during the superbowl and don’t really care to talk to other people while I’m watching. If that’s what you’re after, they’ve had those kind of games in bars for years now.
@ & @
you guys know, you can never really tell unless you’ve tried it once. Try it once. Peace
“Acutally, I don’t waste my time watching overpaid steriod junkies play a game. I’d much prefer something that needs a little thought.”
We could debate the economics of football as a reason to avoid it some other time. I would argue that if they even get an admitted football hater such as yourself to tune in, then the money is well spent.
I digress.
Other than the fact that most sports require enormous amounts of planning, study, and practice to compete at professional level, I’d support your argument if Jeopardy! was a contact and/or athletic competition. In the mean time if you’re interested, competitive chess was an exhibition sport China these past Olympics. You might want to check it out.
I can certainly see where you’re coming from. I’m no expert like a lot of the people here, however, I’d have to say that most people who watch live television may not be the most tech savvy in the world. Not all but most…regular Joes just watching a show/game. In this case, I have to wonder how many of them have PCs in the same room as their main viewing TV.
I’d be willing to bet that most of the people using Facebook are probably DVRing a lot of their viewing.
“I’d be willing to bet that most of the people using Facebook are probably DVRing a lot of their viewing.”
You’re probably right. Still you asked the question “Who the hell watches live TV???” and answered that even you do. Live TV has it’s merits. For the tech savvy crowd and especially the non tech savvy crowd.
Also to answer your question “Who the hell watches live TV???”… most people. Probably the same percentage of people who use IE.
oh cool, they have some pretty good trivia and clips on there too
Oh let me guess…this app had advertising in it?
lol no more advertising than is present on shawndrewry.com amirite?
with advertising and an application for facebook…are you kidding?
Looks like fun, i’ll try it out tonight…
I am sure there is market for all kinds of audience, so its no surprising there are who watch online and interact with others…
cool concept but for me more interesting if my set-top box can provide this functionality in my TV.
Cool app….
Does anyone see the irony in using a metric called “Show IQ” for measuring how well one knows a certain tv show?
Show IQ inversely proportional to IQ?
Actually there are tons of websites that do the same .. streaming TV in the internet. However, the important thing to keep the users engaged is to show them more TV shows that they may like. I wouldn’t go to this site if I know what I want to watch .. but I would prefer a site that recommends me more shows that I may like .. there are quite a few websites that do that job, but I found http://www.cruxle.com to be very interesting as it has a combination of TV Shows, Movies, Music, Books and videos at the same place. And it’s recommendations are pretty powerful, I was even able to drill down to the recommendations from people of my age only, not the old people out in the internet.
I am definetley going to try this out while watching House tonight. Very cool.
No one is talking about the real story here… whether or not this is a good idea or not, it’s clearly the type of thing that Big Media should be experimenting with to save their butts and try to somehow incentivize people to watch live TV… but they’re not, some startup i’ve never heard of is. Wake up call anyone?
Oh Facebook…you will stop at nothing to rule the world. Pretty cool that they’re adding this app to the website. It doesn’t seem like a new idea, but it’s new for Facebook which is important. Pretty soon, the internet is going to BE Facebook. Instead of clicking on Internet Explorer or Firefox, we’ll click on Facebook to not only watch our favorite tv shows, but check weather, sports, news, order take-out, video chat with friends…the list goes on and on…and I remember back in the day when I was surprised about high school kids getting access to this “social network site.” Times have changed.
Wat an elistist bunch. Billions of ppl watch TV everyday. Facebook is universally popular around the world. Can anyone NOT see that an app that supports live, VOD or delayed broadcast is a really good way to experiment with extending program brand reach and community.
Nice to see that Facebook is starting to have more interesting and useful apps. While this application allows user to interact using live TV feeds, there is another application that does the same thing for YouTube videos called Watch Together
http://www.facebook.com/apps/a.....1621746459
YOU ALL NEED TO DIE! Normal people fucking sucks, but you computer people ARE PISSING ME OFF, GO JUMP OFF A SPOON!
and I wont be back here