The social media
revolution has produced a lot of amazing services and capabilities, especially as it intersects with the world of mobile devices -- but inevitably there is a lot of chaff to be separated from the
wheat, as programmers combine various hot concepts seemingly at random (just imagine: DogSpark, a new service that lets your dog "sign in" at the dog park! BoobTube, a ChatRoulette service
for breastfeeding women!). Throw an Apple product into the mix, and you get a positive frenzy of gratuitous app-making.
Here's a good one: it seems developers are creating apps for the
new iPad for social TV viewing. According to the article in Ad Age, MTV is working on branded apps for the iPad (as well as the iPhone and Android) that will allow groups of people to interact in a
common forum while watching a TV program. Part of the idea is that the iPad will be a more appealing device for multitasking during TV shows than, say, a cumbersome laptop or diminutive mobile phone.
Maybe I'm too negative (my mom said so) but all I can see for this are downsides. At the most basic, ergonomic level, I wonder if anyone has actually studied how people use tablet-style
devices while watching TV. By all accounts the iPad isn't exactly well-suited to "lean-forward" activities using the touch-screen virtual keyboard, which requires you to, well, lean
forward, hunching over the tablet as it rests in your lap. If you were lying back on a couch with your knees up I suppose you could rest the iPad against your legs, but in general it has been my
observation that laptops are actually pretty ideal for multitasking while watching TV -- you can arrange the smaller, closer screen so it sits next to or beneath the bigger, more distant screen in
your field of vision, swivel it further away or closer to block the big screen, and so on.
But setting aside ergonomics, the real downside is that social viewing with an iPad merely
highlights multiple technological shortcomings (none of which are the app-makers' fault, but still). The first that comes to mind is the fact that the iPad doesn't allow you to watch video
itself, at least anything that requires Flash (CBS is apparently working on an HTML video player, but that's not part of these iPad apps). I haven't heard anyone use the term
"convergence" lately, but this definitely seems like a failure of convergence to me: why, in 2010, should a cutting-edge media device merely serve as an "appendage" or adjunct to
traditional TV viewing?
The second, related failure highlighted here is the seeming inability or unwillingness of cable networks and service providers to integrate Internet and TV on the
"big screen" in people's living rooms. Currently just getting Netflix on demand requires a fairly convoluted hookup through an Xbox or similar multimedia center, so I'm guessing it
will be a while before an average viewer can, say, have a social media portal open on screen next to the TV program they're watching.