You’re probably wondering who Ms. Gabriella is and why you would care if she watches TV or not. Well, Ms. Gabriella is actually my daughter and I recently realized that she doesn’t watch TV, at least not TV the way I know it. This state of affairs requires a bit of explanation. Since I was a small child I have been fascinated with movies, TV shows, and music. In high school I began a path down technological geekhood, I had to have the latest AV gear. Big stereos, big speakers, big TVs, and of course the highest end content I could find. Two years ago all of that changed.
It began simply enough, in the winter of 2007 I happened to be in the mountains on a ski trip and I found myself one night with nothing to do. I went to the TV and nothing was on. About this time a company called Move Networks was working on a technology that would allow for progressive downloads of video content over the Internet. One of their showcase accounts was ABC, which had entered the online video world by releasing the entire catalog of Lost up until that point via online delivery. I’d heard that video over the internet was evolving out of it’s YouTube short form days to full length content, in HD. I decided to give it a try and I found that an entire week disappeared, as I was soaked into the experience of watching Lost online.
This was the real deal, on demand content, with a great experience. Fast forward to the fall of 2009, I asked my wife to embark on an experiment with me, let’s not watch anything other than online content for a month. Netflix was streaming movies and Hulu had a full suite of shows that we regularly watched. At the end of the month we decided that we could live without a traditional video subscription and cancelled our service. Which brings me back to Ms. Gabriella. You see Ms Gabriella is going to grow up in a much different world than then one I grew up in. There’s no remote control on the coffee table and there’s no equivalent to channel surfing. You have to take an active interest in your content, seek out what you want to watch, and then find a means of doing so. We can’t just turn on the TV and leave her in front of it, and that’s not such a bad thing.
According to a recent survey of MTV Networks MY Voice Online Panelists (2010), 35% of teens watch online video on a daily basis, and as many watch on a weekly basis. The survey respondents also noted that they appreciated the flexibility and convenience of online video and 69% of them planned to increase their consumption in the coming year and 67% planned to increase consumption of full length TV shows over the same period. This is all occurring during what can be described as the dawn of the online era, imagine what the next generation of online content will be like.
Photo courtesy Len Zheleznyak
Looking at online video trends is only showing part of what is going on with content consumption. You see, unlike my youth, Ms. Gabriella has a plethora of new digital diversions to occupy her time. Like spending time catching up with friends via Facebook, fragging opponents online in Call of Duty, texting on her cell phone, Skype, Facetime, Club Penguin, and that’s all in addition to her activities in real life. Good thing she’s too little to do any of that now and Mom and I have some time to figure out what to do about it.
In our household Ms. Gabriella will grow up actively choosing from a whole slew of digital distractions to occupy her time. She will have some strong expectations, she will want them to work, deliver outstanding experience, and be available at all times and on all of her devices. This is the challenge that we face in the Internet industry. How will we handle the sheer quantity of traffic that continues to grow at a massive rate? I recently saw a report from Cisco that talked about Zetabytes and the Terabyte home consumer. How will we architect the solutions that will make this anywhere, anytime, any device world possible. Do we even know what that means in the next year, 2 years, or 3 years, are we ready for the next black swan?
Then again, some of this is wishful thinking on my part and one day Ms. Gabriella will come home and ask why we can’t just have regular TV like everyone else.
I’ll be exploring many of these questions with this blog over time and please free to leave me your thoughts on how the online world is affecting your family.
About Stacey Sayer
[...] never paid for it in the first place.Cord Nevers describe those people. Who are they? People like Len’s daughter and my children. They simply don’t understand the concept of appointment TV. They go to their [...]