8 ms·

I'm genuinely surprised that Facebook hasn't capitalized on the social aspect of watching TV. The prevalence of "watching parties", immediate episode reviews, a

I'm genuinely surprised that Facebook hasn't capitalized on the social aspect of watching TV. The prevalence of "watching parties", immediate episode reviews, and instant commentary on the released episodes/shows should point to the large opportunity here. I've wanted to create a startup around this - the ability to "watch a show with your friends" remotely. The problem is that the content is often locked down via Netflix or something, so you'd need an in there. But the opportunities are huge! Imagine watching the presidential debates, or sporting events, in tandem with other people. That would be amazing. Unfortunately, locking down the content is still in the way.

tfinch 9y ago
I've used https://www.letsgaze.com/#/ https://www.letsgaze.com/#/ a few times which worked pretty well. Only works with files you have access to, or freely available youtube content though. I agree that it's a neat idea. I'm sure the content problem is why there aren't more attempts at the moment.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Thanks for that link! I had found http://syncplay.pl/ http://syncplay.pl/ but it seems much more fiddly than that.
jabv 9y ago
Just to offer counter-perspective on your estimation that there's a "large" opportunity as you describe - I have never heard of any of my friends or family holding or attending a "watch party" for anything other than a few American football games each year. It seems to me that this does happen, but for all I know, maybe FB considered your idea, and the idea failed market validation. Or maybe you're dead on! (shruggie emoticon)
- dkarl 9y ago
  In the last year I've been invited to watch parties for the presidential election, a G.L.O.W. binge, the Game of Thrones season premier, and the first couple of Twin Peaks episodes. FWIW, the physical constraints are big aspects preventing people organizing more. The hosts have to make sure their house is clean, people have to stay up later to travel and/or clean up, they don't get to watch in their boxers. Making it virtual on Facebook would relieve all of those practical constraints, not to mention that lots of people have an itch to check Facebook while they watch anyway (which is not a positive thing, but there it is.) On the downside, it punishes people who can't start exactly on time and prevents people pausing to grab a drink or go to the bathroom, so it isn't purely a no-brainer. People who "fall out of sync" would need to disconnect to avoid spoilers.
  - gpawl 9y ago
    > FWIW, the physical constraints are big aspects preventing people organizing more. They are also big aspects of the value! When someone says "it sure is hard to get my friends together for a party", it's not completely helpful to answer "so don't get together"
- careersuicide 9y ago
  It's definitely been a thing for a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6otjCKg594 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6otjCKg594
wcarss 9y ago
While thinking about this problem in the past, I've ended up using the phrase "participatory meta-content" to describe this kind of content that's built around the audience's participation in the viewing of a show. I agree that the opportunity here is huge, but the garden walls are high. Twitch is the closest thing to a major player in this space that I'm aware of -- they've even gone to the point of simulating the live-chat experience while you watch an old stream, by replaying chat messages at their correct time-offsets. Things like this for television do exist specifically for group-watching with a known set of friends, but I think the really interesting part would be stumbling into a community you didn't know about in advance, and making new friends. Anyway, it's a shame that the licensing regimes built around the media that garners these kinds of audiences are unlikely to permit the sort of experimentation required to find the right experience here! Maybe someone will figure it out.
thousande 9y ago
Isn't this something like what's been emerging on Twitch and YouTube the last couple of years? Eg. during The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017 (E3) in June there where multiple YouTube channels streaming with side chat, comments and what not. I think I have seen it with the recent Star Wars releases too. Maybe it is not quite what you describe, but this seems to be a trend Recording, https://www.twitch.tv/videos/152047092 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/152047092
- misterbowfinger 9y ago
  Yup! Though, I'd take it further: - Have it be friends-specific. I don't always want to watch with strangers. - Be able to talk to each other, but modify the audio on-the-fly so that it doesn't overpower the audio from the show. In the ideal case, I want to be able to "hear" from my friend on my "left". Hard to do, but worth it - If it's totally public, there has to be a way to surface relevant content. Twitch has more of a "stadium" feel. I want something more high-quality. I want to hear what my favorite reviewer from the A.V. Club is saying, for example - Emoji reactions!!!!!!!! Sticky-text isn't always the best thing, sometimes I just want in-the-moment ephemeral reactions - Discovery for online watching groups. This can split out to something far better down the line - Integration with PS4, XBox 1, Apple TV, Roku, and other TV platforms. I don't want to look at my phone while watching Game of Thrones or my favorite movie
  - girvo 9y ago
    The Xbox One was going to have this exact feature at launch, but I think they ended up killing it?
krrishd 9y ago
You may find this interesting: https://www.netflixparty.com/ https://www.netflixparty.com/
Stanleyc23 9y ago
this now exists for youtube https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/uptime-youtubes-experimental-app-for-watching-videos-with-friends-opens-to-all/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/uptime-youtubes-experiment...
ycombinators 9y ago
https://www.rabb.it/ https://www.rabb.it/ let's you do this. They advertise about letting you watch Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and anything else with your friends. It seems to be just streaming the user host's screen to anyone else in the room. I'm not sure how legal that is.
mcgrath_sh 9y ago
This is what sports twitter is. Yes, you have to build up the list of people you follow and interact with people to build your followers, but I would much rather that than have to share a sporting event with every fan. I would rather have the content and the discussion separate. This gets even more important when something is a global (such as a Barcelona - Real Madird game). Everyone can join the dicussion and you can curate it to your preferences. I can only imagine having a chatroom with a half-billion (or more) people in dozens of languages. Sports also has the built in advantage of being the one thing most people will consistently watch live and is (typically) broadcast live across time zones. People also expect for results to be "spoiled" if they didn't watch live and know they are responsible for actively avoiding that information. Essentially, sports are (IMO) the last form of entertainment that dictates what time you watch. I am convinced I love twitter as much as I do because I use it primarily as a way to watch and discuss sports with other people who love that team/sport/game as much as I do. Even among my real life sports fan friends, our interest in a particular game or sport differs. Not so much those who are actively watching and commenting on the games on twitter. You are there and engaged because you want to be. Due to this, I was able to meet fans of my teams that live in multiple countries and consistently talk to them, even outside of that particular event. Especially for sports, so much of the interaction happens arounds the games (who to play, who to sign, tactics, etc.). I would hate to only interact with people in that small time frame and miss all surrounding discussion from people whose opinions I find well thought out or think in a similar manner that I do. The short snippets of text are great for getting stats and updates directly from reporters/teams/leagues, too. Highlights are able to be immediately played via twitter and photos, gifs, and screenshots are immediately shared. The NBA has really embraced social media with its content policies (cannot use more than two consecutive minutes of broadcast footage without a license; 20 minutes of spliced highlights is fair use) that lets fans make mix tapes, instant highlights, gifs, etc, easily and without fear of copyright takedown notices. In turn, the NBA essentially gets free marketing from its fans. This is where the NFL really blew things, even locking down offical team accounts. Teams are starting to use Periscope to broadcast press conferences, interviews, and warmpus to their fan bases. If you want to see this kind of dynamic live, check out a big game or a night with a lot of games on NBA twitter. A good-ish place to start would be the SB Nation accounts for the teams and who they are RTing and interacting with. It can be a whole lot of fun and it is easy to catch the highlights of the other games or know if someone is having a monster game you should switch over to. To me, the wider web of people that twitter catches is much more appropriate for these types of interactions than facebook ever will be. If your goal is to have your small group of friends watch a show, I can see where you find current offerings lacking. But when you want to get involved in an existing "event" twitter is really great for that.
johansch 9y ago
Maybe they were too busy micro-optimizing engagement rates using a very large amount of A/B experiments and got stuck at a local maximum?
emodendroket 9y ago
What is Facebook Live if not that?

tfinch 9y ago

I've used https://www.letsgaze.com/#/ https://www.letsgaze.com/#/ a few times which worked pretty well. Only works with files you have access to, or freely available youtube content though. I agree that it's a neat idea. I'm sure the content problem is why there aren't more attempts at the moment.

icebraining 9y ago
Thanks for that link! I had found http://syncplay.pl/ http://syncplay.pl/ but it seems much more fiddly than that.

jabv 9y ago

Just to offer counter-perspective on your estimation that there's a "large" opportunity as you describe - I have never heard of any of my friends or family holding or attending a "watch party" for anything other than a few American football games each year. It seems to me that this does happen, but for all I know, maybe FB considered your idea, and the idea failed market validation. Or maybe you're dead on! (shruggie emoticon)

dkarl 9y ago
In the last year I've been invited to watch parties for the presidential election, a G.L.O.W. binge, the Game of Thrones season premier, and the first couple of Twin Peaks episodes. FWIW, the physical constraints are big aspects preventing people organizing more. The hosts have to make sure their house is clean, people have to stay up later to travel and/or clean up, they don't get to watch in their boxers. Making it virtual on Facebook would relieve all of those practical constraints, not to mention that lots of people have an itch to check Facebook while they watch anyway (which is not a positive thing, but there it is.) On the downside, it punishes people who can't start exactly on time and prevents people pausing to grab a drink or go to the bathroom, so it isn't purely a no-brainer. People who "fall out of sync" would need to disconnect to avoid spoilers.
- gpawl 9y ago
  > FWIW, the physical constraints are big aspects preventing people organizing more. They are also big aspects of the value! When someone says "it sure is hard to get my friends together for a party", it's not completely helpful to answer "so don't get together"
careersuicide 9y ago
It's definitely been a thing for a while: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6otjCKg594 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6otjCKg594

wcarss 9y ago

While thinking about this problem in the past, I've ended up using the phrase "participatory meta-content" to describe this kind of content that's built around the audience's participation in the viewing of a show. I agree that the opportunity here is huge, but the garden walls are high. Twitch is the closest thing to a major player in this space that I'm aware of -- they've even gone to the point of simulating the live-chat experience while you watch an old stream, by replaying chat messages at their correct time-offsets. Things like this for television do exist specifically for group-watching with a known set of friends, but I think the really interesting part would be stumbling into a community you didn't know about in advance, and making new friends. Anyway, it's a shame that the licensing regimes built around the media that garners these kinds of audiences are unlikely to permit the sort of experimentation required to find the right experience here! Maybe someone will figure it out.

thousande 9y ago

Isn't this something like what's been emerging on Twitch and YouTube the last couple of years? Eg. during The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017 (E3) in June there where multiple YouTube channels streaming with side chat, comments and what not. I think I have seen it with the recent Star Wars releases too. Maybe it is not quite what you describe, but this seems to be a trend Recording, https://www.twitch.tv/videos/152047092 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/152047092

misterbowfinger 9y ago
Yup! Though, I'd take it further: - Have it be friends-specific. I don't always want to watch with strangers. - Be able to talk to each other, but modify the audio on-the-fly so that it doesn't overpower the audio from the show. In the ideal case, I want to be able to "hear" from my friend on my "left". Hard to do, but worth it - If it's totally public, there has to be a way to surface relevant content. Twitch has more of a "stadium" feel. I want something more high-quality. I want to hear what my favorite reviewer from the A.V. Club is saying, for example - Emoji reactions!!!!!!!! Sticky-text isn't always the best thing, sometimes I just want in-the-moment ephemeral reactions - Discovery for online watching groups. This can split out to something far better down the line - Integration with PS4, XBox 1, Apple TV, Roku, and other TV platforms. I don't want to look at my phone while watching Game of Thrones or my favorite movie
- girvo 9y ago
  The Xbox One was going to have this exact feature at launch, but I think they ended up killing it?

krrishd 9y ago

You may find this interesting: https://www.netflixparty.com/ https://www.netflixparty.com/

Stanleyc23 9y ago

this now exists for youtube https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/uptime-youtubes-experimental-app-for-watching-videos-with-friends-opens-to-all/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/uptime-youtubes-experiment...

ycombinators 9y ago

https://www.rabb.it/ https://www.rabb.it/ let's you do this. They advertise about letting you watch Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and anything else with your friends. It seems to be just streaming the user host's screen to anyone else in the room. I'm not sure how legal that is.

mcgrath_sh 9y ago

This is what sports twitter is. Yes, you have to build up the list of people you follow and interact with people to build your followers, but I would much rather that than have to share a sporting event with every fan. I would rather have the content and the discussion separate. This gets even more important when something is a global (such as a Barcelona - Real Madird game). Everyone can join the dicussion and you can curate it to your preferences. I can only imagine having a chatroom with a half-billion (or more) people in dozens of languages. Sports also has the built in advantage of being the one thing most people will consistently watch live and is (typically) broadcast live across time zones. People also expect for results to be "spoiled" if they didn't watch live and know they are responsible for actively avoiding that information. Essentially, sports are (IMO) the last form of entertainment that dictates what time you watch. I am convinced I love twitter as much as I do because I use it primarily as a way to watch and discuss sports with other people who love that team/sport/game as much as I do. Even among my real life sports fan friends, our interest in a particular game or sport differs. Not so much those who are actively watching and commenting on the games on twitter. You are there and engaged because you want to be. Due to this, I was able to meet fans of my teams that live in multiple countries and consistently talk to them, even outside of that particular event. Especially for sports, so much of the interaction happens arounds the games (who to play, who to sign, tactics, etc.). I would hate to only interact with people in that small time frame and miss all surrounding discussion from people whose opinions I find well thought out or think in a similar manner that I do. The short snippets of text are great for getting stats and updates directly from reporters/teams/leagues, too. Highlights are able to be immediately played via twitter and photos, gifs, and screenshots are immediately shared. The NBA has really embraced social media with its content policies (cannot use more than two consecutive minutes of broadcast footage without a license; 20 minutes of spliced highlights is fair use) that lets fans make mix tapes, instant highlights, gifs, etc, easily and without fear of copyright takedown notices. In turn, the NBA essentially gets free marketing from its fans. This is where the NFL really blew things, even locking down offical team accounts. Teams are starting to use Periscope to broadcast press conferences, interviews, and warmpus to their fan bases. If you want to see this kind of dynamic live, check out a big game or a night with a lot of games on NBA twitter. A good-ish place to start would be the SB Nation accounts for the teams and who they are RTing and interacting with. It can be a whole lot of fun and it is easy to catch the highlights of the other games or know if someone is having a monster game you should switch over to. To me, the wider web of people that twitter catches is much more appropriate for these types of interactions than facebook ever will be. If your goal is to have your small group of friends watch a show, I can see where you find current offerings lacking. But when you want to get involved in an existing "event" twitter is really great for that.

johansch 9y ago

Maybe they were too busy micro-optimizing engagement rates using a very large amount of A/B experiments and got stuck at a local maximum?

emodendroket 9y ago

What is Facebook Live if not that?