When I first wrote about real-time conversations on the web (here), I was thinking of bringing the web and the metaverse closer together. A german startup called telewebber now shows, that you can also think about connecting the web with the (RL) living-room, by creating a platform, which allows people to chat about what they see on TV together.

The Basic Idea

I guess one of the sources of inspiration for this idea has been Twitter and the fact that during very popular TV-shows in Germany, you could observe a lot of people talking about what they are seeing on TV via Twitter.

One example for that is the latest final of Germanys version of “American Idol” called “Deutschland sucht den Superstar”, during which a lot of chat was going on about what happened via Twitter, so that you practically don’t had to really look the show

They are right now in beta and have invited the first test users a few days ago - good timing - because right now is the EURO2008, a very popular european soccer championship, and on the day they invited the first users, Germany was playing against Poland.

How it works

As you can see on the screenshot above (click it for a larger version) you have in the middle of the screen the chat going on, on the right hand side an overview of people chatting with you and on the left hand side you have a kind of ticker.

Apart from just chatting you have a lot of small tools to show emotions and to vote things into the ticker. Additional they also implemented a set of features to do votings, to guess advertisements, to quote what people within the TV show have said, there are also a few special gimmicks for soccer games and finally also a small Twitter connection, to indicate on Twitter, what you are looking on TV now.

And finally it of course also has typical SNS like features, which means you have your own profile and that you can make friends with others.

Pros and Cons

I must admit that I really like the service so far and that it has been a lot of fun to use it. At the moment there are of course only the typical German web2.0 geeks on the patform and yesterday we have been talking more about the new iPhone, telewebber itself and other geeky stuff than the soccer game, which was on TV, but it was fun and I can imagine to really use this platform from time to time, BUT preferable not on a computer.

Due to the fact, that most people don’t have or don’t like to have a laptop with them on their sofa, while watching TV, I would say that the biggest potential for this application really lies in mobile devices. The number of mobile phones, which are with people in the living-room while watching TV must extend the numbers of people having a laptop with them many times over.

Apart from the device questions I also see a problem with more and more people using Video-on-Demand and HD-Recorders. I personally use those services about one year now and it has dramatically changed my type of use. About 90% of the time I look TV, I look time-shifted or something on-demand/recorded. Only big live events like the German “American Idol” or big sport events, I still look at the time they are broadcasted.

Summary

I really like this service and the idea itself and I am glad to see another application arising, which pushes to communicate and to do thing together in real-time on the web, which I think is a bigger trend right now. I think that it will be important to have a mobile application as well and I am a bit concerned how it will be able to catch up with a growing amount of viewers, which have a changed TV behavior, like I have.