Foursquare for television? Yup, that's the strategy behind a new app called Viggle. Users check-in when they are watching a television show and earn points for every minute they watch. Watch 35 hours of television a week and you could earn gift cards, movie tickets, and music.
What's funny is that I learned about this app while reading a fitness magazine, Self. Watching 35 hours of TV per week is quite excessive, and not to mention, quite lazy. But aside from my disagreement with Self magazine for touting this app, I do think there is something to it. This is a concept media companies would love, as it could bring together communities around specific shows and create new opportunities for target marketing. It would be cool if viewers could chat with each other while watching the show, for example.
There are certainly people out there who watch an absurd amount of TV each week, so this app is for them. Why not earn free stuff while sitting on the couch? Imagine if there was an app like this for World of Warcraft gamers...
http://www.viggle.com/
3 comments:
This is a very interesting company. When I first heard about it I wondered how it could verify what a user is watching. It's pretty incredible and operates like Shazam but for TV. I guess the must have some sort of sound/sight recognition technology that matches against TV show database in real time. Impressive!
The Exec chair and CEO is a Robert F.X. Sillerman- who through various entities produced The Producers, bought a majority share in Graceland, and bough 19 Entertainment.
I agree that an app that encourages people to watch more TV is not exactly helping to make society healthier. It does have interesting implications for revolutionizing the way viewer numbers are tallied, though...
I couldn't read this post and not counter with one of my favorite technologies for working out: Nike+. Check it out here:
http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/training/nike-plus-training
I use this app all the time, it really is a great tool. It uses iPhone technology (GPS, etc) to track and record your workouts, and can even play a pre-selected "pump up" song when it senses that you are slowing down. It's like a personal trainer on your phone!
This could prove very interesting for television advertisers. Nielson seems to be the out-dated standard still. But this (along with voting based shows) highlights the actual audience watching the show regardless of whether they are a Nielson client. Also, this could help branch the gap with recorded television. I imagine people could check in to watchin television at any time and not just when it is live. That could also provide another metric to track - how many live watchers versus recorded watchers.
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