WitStream, The Superbowl & Real Time Web Convergence
Time spent online is way up, across the board. Mobile web advances have put the net in the palm of everyone’s hand. People tweet like they used to make phone calls. And the convergence of the computer screen and TV screen is fast at hand, as people take to couch browsing and streaming (I mean, didn’t that Google Ad look pretty slick in HD?).
But with all these tech-adoptive, societal progressions, none of them really matter unless there’s something interesting to search for, to read, to stream. The printing press wasn’t invented to serve ads. It was invented to share some of the best “content” in the world – the word of The Lord, primarily. Dude had way more followers than Ashton Kutcher and had significantly more interesting stuff to say, too.
Jesus and Ashton aside, the vast majority of commentary on Twitter is absurd garbage when streamed en masse. That’s where WitStream stepped in last year, to curate a palatable stream of pithy, witty commentary; a Twitter comprised of only professional funny people. The site even curates, picking the most-funny of the already funny. Day in and day out, the site is a laugh riot. Or at least a smirk riot. This Superbowl Sunday, the site truly shined, highlighting one scenario in the future of media convergence – real time web commentary integrated with TV viewing.
Most people today still have to set up such a multimedia trick the old fashioned way, with laptop in lap and eyes on the TV, but one of these days here, some sharp kid will figure out how to do it right – watch the Superbowl, and the commercials, with real time commentary integrated. Kind of like VH1′s classic Pop-Up Video, or maybe the cult classic show Mystery Science Theatre. We’ve all got our IRL friend with the “hilarious” play-by-play, but what if you could instead outsource that to professionals like the cast of Witstream. Tell me these guys aren’t funnier than most, if not all, of your bros -
Great stuff which could be made even more significant and relevant with a little API integration magic, right?
At some point in the past, the addition of the color commentator to a sporting event was a turning point. Today it’s old hat, and honestly a little played-out – do I really need to hear, yet-again, how great the Raven’s penetration is? So imagine if you could queue up your own text based color commentary, as the logical progression of commentary, of layering and of mass communication. And not just with sports; watch The State of the Union with short, live updates from James Carville. Or if you prefer, Karl Rove. Read Chris Brown’s tweets as you watch the BET Awards. Well maybe not that last one.
The concept of convergence isn’t in the least bit new, but as technology rolls out, and more importantly, as people with something decent to say take advantage of these new innovations, we’re going to see more concrete executions, making convergence less of an abstract concept and more of a concrete, and hopefully LOL-inducing reality.
