From Twitter and Facebook To Boxee
About a month ago, Boxee released a new build. I dutifully installed it but then we moved and it's taken me most of the past month to get my audio and video setup in our new home back to where it was in our old place. This past weekend I got our mac mini set up and loaded up Boxee. And here's what my feed looked like:
That first video was not shared via Boxee (like the next two were), it came from a friend of my son's via Facebook. It's a pretty funny video from This Just In.
Boxee also pulls videos from your Twitter feed. So now there are multiple ways for videos to get into your Boxee feed. You get videos that are shared by people you follow on Boxee, Facebook, and Twitter.
A few months ago I posted about the Boxee bookmarklet which I use all the time to "watch later." I've stopped interrupting my day watching videos that I come across on the web and email and I load up Boxee after dinner and do my video watching from the comfort of my family room. Now I can do that with Facebook and Twitter too. Very cool. Thanks Boxee.
Also, you should check out that second video called Up There. It is a really neat 13 minute documentary about the people who paint large advertisements on NYC buildings.
Comments (Archived):
I think the great aspect of that boxee bookmarklet is that it makes the personal act of watching web video intimately social by sharing it with the family – everyone can watch together after dinner.
Yup. And having your teenage son’s facebook feed in your boxee feed can make for some interesting family moments
Should have been a warning at the top not to read the comments after midnight. Will have to come back later to verify that I didn’t dream all this. LOVE this community!
Another slightly off-topic question (and again, feel free to ignore if you feel it’s too off-the-reservation):Do you make a specific effort to make sure you use your investments’ products (aka dogfooding)?Do you find that few/some/most/all VCs in the consumer internet and mobile spaces use their investments’ products?
Fred uses them before he invests and after (afik) Makes sense that if he gets the appeal of the product it’ll work with USVs investment thesis.
More like I have a hard time investing in something I don’t actively use already
Would that preclude an investment in companies outside your demo, egCafeMom, PlentyOfFish, maybe (kids aside) Knewton?
Yes and no. I’ve signed up on many online dating sites over the years but never invested in any of them. Its a bit weird I have to admit
Do you find it harder to invest because your use is purelyacademic/professional (as opposed to the true, intended consumerexperience)? Or is it more a case of just not finding a good fit?
That is hard to say
As a card-carrying Baby Boomer, color me impressed with your cutting edge grasp of what’s new in the world of consumer electronics – and how the latest hardware “plays” with social software. In a world of seemingly limitless information and entertainment choices, Boxee’s ability to narrow the field using trusted data from your personal networks sounds intriguing.
Fred doesn’t just grasp, he influences. It’s a nice position to be in.
and imagine how powerful he’ll be once we all start using fredbucks
Or the new social network, “Fredbook”.
totally! here is the fredland i envision:fredtv – fred’s boxee feedfredbook — fred’s social networkfredbucks – virtual currency used throughout fredland (i.e. on fredbook, onyour fredphone, etc)geofred – mobile app for fredlanders (lets you find fellow fredlandersnearby, fred-approved businesses, etc). a case could be made for callingthis fredsquare, although i personally like fredsquare to refer to the thegame play/reputation system in fredlandfredphone – fred’s phone system, pre-configured to fred’s defaults (comeswith geofred pre-installed)fredfox – web browser, pre-installed with plug-ins fred usesprobably lots more in the future, as the web continues to develop….i’mdefinitely pumped about frednet, the ISP governed by fred…..like presumably all fredlanders, i trust fred with all this power, but iwould also want data portability to ensure that if fred ever turned evil onus, or if he was forced against his will to do so, we would still have theability to survive.
Let’s not forget the hot new tablet computing device, “The FredPad”.
Merchandizing!
That supports flash and allows its users to determine what they want to use it for
haha, subtle dig Fred!
Ad campaign: “Think Fred”.
That is just way too creepy.
but alas, not nearly as creepy as the way it currently is….
I don’t think the English people here watch the QoE’s TV. And while I would love to go out for a friendly coffee chat with you, that’s irrelevant of Fred’s existence or not (or at least, semi-relevant, I met you here). where I sit, I sit in a US constitutional democracy where we overthrew a king. I prefer not naming stuff after a person.Fred, you are a venture capitalist, parent, and numerous other roles- however, king is not one of them. I will find a proverbial three cornered hat and internet tea to protest such roles.
Lol, you live in a country with obamacare.Pfft. I will bet all my fredbucks that fredcare is a better solution than obamacare.Btw, if fredbucks are pegged to gold, than we will see how much you like obamabucks relative to fredbucks. I bet in such a world you too would cave to the power of fred.
Last I checked, so do you Kid…and healthcare costs here are ridiculousirrelevant of obamacare or not- the question is what is the best way tobring them down (and there are lots of ways)And we’ve been through this- Gold inflates too!
People here love to buy healthcare, and doctors, Big Pharma, hospital corporations, and even the government make it pretty easy for 90% of America to not really ever have a clue about what their healthcare dollars are actually buying; and what options might be available to a healthcare consumer with true freedom to choose. So many expensive treatments have no proven positive marginal effect when compared to the side effects, it is very tough to make it through FDA/AMA-type clinical trials, but making it through such trials is a very poor proxy for determining which new treatments will have a positive impact on patients. Prostate screenings being one issue which has gotten mainstream pub recently as being more dangerous than any early warning by using the advanced screening would end up being helpful as a preventative measure.True that gold does inflate- but it inflates so much more predictably and in line with the economic growth denominated in gold, at least up to the point when we have extracted all the easy-ish gold to mine. Not that I expect gold standard to return prior to such exhaustion of accessible gold deposits to mine, but I will get off this tangent-on-tangent now…
Ill be there right next to you
Yep.
I can’t get my own family to adopt all of this
it starts with fredbucks. then they can instantly convert their fredbucksinto US dollars/euros/yen etc and pay with their fredcard, a debit cardissued by fredbank. once their using their fredcard to spend fredbucks,which they’ll want because everything is cheaper with fredbucks, thenselling the rest will be fairly straightforward. the virtual currency is thein, the entrance pass to the promised land. fredland.
Said it once, will say it again…Frederation.
SocialTHE BIG PICTURE VALUE EQUATIONhttp://vodpod.com/watch/308…the funny part starts at 20:38
where we don’t change the privacy settings because everything is already public
Money, like most useful methods of exchange, is about influence. It’s an intermediate step to getting to the product/service that you want (and a very useful one at that)
You are wary of fiat money issued by a state, but would embrace money issued by one man?
Whoever said fredbucks was fiat money? What if it was pegged to gold and silver? Then it would be in compliance with what the US constitution defines as money (unlike the federal reserve, which operates an unconstitutional money system)
That sounds feasible. Maybe Fred could wear a mini vault — sort of like an armored fanny pack — and whenever you want to exchange your fredbucks for precious metal, you could track him down via a new Foursquare subsidiary, Goldsquare. Then you would get retina-scanned for identification by his phalanx of Honda security robots (armed with phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range) and Fred will stop what he’s doing for a moment and make the exchange, while his accounting robot records it.
Likely buyers and sellers of fredbucks will exchange naturally. Fred will only need to come in if someone specifically asks to redeem their fredbucks for gold. If fred is responsible, this should almost never happen. But if fred decides to abuse the trust placed him and issue more gold certificates (aka fredbucks) than can actually be accounted for — in other words, if fred lies about how much gold he has — well, then we’d have a problem, much like the one we already have.
I think a lobster dinner would be good for you.
LOL
I’m gonna charge 30pcnt for all transactions done in fredbucks 🙂
well i hope you will provide lots of quality free services if you are goingto impose such outrageous taxes on the people
We’re all learning together.Influencing is cool but it takes a lot of energy.Fred’s gotta stay in tip top shape with his email juggling fingers and treadmill to keep his attention and presentation wielding super powers sharp.
I doubt it takes more energy out of Fred to write a blog post or tweet than it does you. And I don’t think Fred’s ‘super powers’ are in much danger of going dull. He is not just an observer or commenter; his act of observing or commenting has a gravitational power to it due to his status as a successful web tech VC.
Its the warm months where I bike and think instead of typing on the treadmill
first, i haven’t been to boxee in a while, but i whoever designed the latest version of the site did a great job. easy to understand.is there a way to get boxee user feeds as media rss feeds? for instance is there an rss feed of fred’s boxee feed? if not, is that in the works, or is that not really a part of the game plan? unsure? i don’t ask critically, as i think there are lots of ways to play it, just curious.if boxee lets everyone take their data out of the system, i could see them really benefiting from having an entirely integrated system like crapple. but, IMHO, federation is the key to having the moral authority needed to operate closed systems. that’s been a thought i’ve been ruminating on a bit lately.
Debating federated versus single server with my cofounder Tyler this AM for the same reasons. The problem is complexity for distributed state information and syncronization. His latest hackathon revealed a social network tool that yields maximal info with zero distraction. It’s an observer pattern (public open follow model) but none of the heft of other social networks. Somewhere along the way they all lose sight of raw communication and the value it brings with simplicity. I blogged it up, but waiting to publish until we (me testing him coding) work out some bugs for a Portland web design conference tomorrow.
I wonder about synchronization, or the tolerance for a lack of it. I think there will be some tolerance for it, especially as the web enables roll back versions — i.e. turning back time.I think true synchronization will be tough until the technology that lets us travel faster than time is publicly revealed, and without obstrusive patents. This will bring us teleportation, time travel, perfect data integrity in virtual federation….truly a new world order.
Have you ever watched Galaxy Quest. No one in their right mind will volunteer to be destroyed and recreated. Teleportation is for apples not people man, learn your Kook tech 😀
Will need teleportation for apples and humans IMHO. But more importantly, how do you define human? Alas, the next great frontier of technology in our new world order will require acceptance of certain spiritual concepts as truth, IMHO.Incidentally, Andrew Basiago, who claims to have been a part of US govt teleportation experiments, claims that some of his peers who were also a part of those experiments were “lost in time” — they did not re-materialize in their expected location after going through the teleportation portal, and have not been found in our space time coordinates again since then.
Kidmercury, I can’t really get a fix on whether you actually believe this stuff or not.
lol, i suppose i should clarify. i think there is a lot of truth tosuppressed time travel and teleportation technology. basically, i amconvinced that we are not alone — that there are extraterrestrials,non-incarnate beings, and inter-dimensional beings. if that is accepted,which i do, the question then is how do they get here? if we look at thetons and tons of reports of aliens and such, so many of them involve storiesof time travel and teleportation. as such, i find it believable, basedlargely on how frequently the theme recurs amongst alien stories i find tobe credible enough. i then find it likely it is being suppressed by theenergy/banking cartel that controls everything, as this fits the overallcontext of the conspiratorial worldview (i.e. the bankers run everything). ithus believe that once this cartel is removed from power, a utopia of freeenergy, sound money, and technology currently considered impossible will bereadily available in commercial format in not much time at all. but the onlyway we can get there is by demanding and serving the truth. the truth setsus free.
I’m impressed by how well you isolate and clarify your assumptions beforehand and then deduce from there. Very unlike most conspiracists I’ve come across.Now, I’ll stay out of the realm of sound money and such. But one thing I do happen to be knowledgeable about is energy.. Energy is never free. It is always converted from one form to another inefficiently but is always a zero sum game in the end. However, I certainly agree that our access to a much higher potential of energy production is being significantly hampered by the powers that be.
the free energy solutions i’ve come across stem from leveraging energy inother dimensions of reality. the universe is forever expanding, and in doingso, the supply of energy is forever expanding as well. to accept this,though, we must accept there are multiple dimensions of reality. like timetravel, this challenges many spiritual notions.there is a guy named dr steven greer who heads up some organizationdedicated to bringing this technology to light. i forget the name of hisorganization. i also do not believe everything greer says. but, i think heis a good starting point for those interested in learning more about thisschool of thought. he is very well educated and presents himself well. he isa medical doctor.
Ah, but my dear kidmercury there is no need for alternate dimensions of reality at all. We have enough energy here on earth to satisfy mankind’s needs until our current sun, Sol, dies. Now, this may be a topic for a different forum but may I interest you in fission and the fact that there is about 5 billion tons of uranium in this world’s oceans. Professor Bernard Cohen of Pitt illustrates it nicely here: http://bit.ly/c1qikxNow to satisfy your conspiracy urge I’ll add that fission is essentially the perfect competitor to established oil and coal industries. They would do anything within their extreme power to marginalize such a competitor.
fair enough, though we’ll still need acceptance of multiple dimensions ofreality for other technologies, specifically those related to teleportationand time travel. unless of course we are not interested in suchtechnologies, in which case willful ignorance may in fact be the bestsolution. or so it seems…..
Can’t wait for those technologies but in the meantime I’m lovin this dimension
Our sun has a name — and the name is “Sol”? Who knew. Is that short for Solomon? Does it have a last name?
Apparently he does! Sol Invictus http://bit.ly/93cmkp
I like it. It sounds like something Mark Essel would name the sun.
This community never ceases to amaze me. How did we go from social videos to free energy?
Count me in the teleportation kook group. I dream about it daily
The embodiment of the Alien is pure informationhttp://www.youtube.com/watc…
We plan to enable the user to opt-in to whether he would like to share his watching history, queue and feed. In case the user opts-in to share then an RSS of the items will be made available.
Sounds great. Thanks for replying.Fred, when you get an RSS feed of your boxee, please let us know the URL if you’d like to share, as I’d like to subscribe it (fredfeed!).
Couldn’t agree more about the site. I love the video at the top that looks like its clipped or something. Gets you to click on it and they get you to watch what its all about.
I think they offer what you want kid
Hi Fred. We like the way Boxee brings online videos to TV. We built shufflr.tv (a social video browser) with an intent to make online video discovery and viewing a social experience.Given the announcement yesterday by Google (SmartTV), how do you think the landscape will evolve for content creators who could implement a pay-per-search model and share revenue with Google?
I need to go read the announcement before answering this one
thanks Fred. look forward to your views. here are two links to the announcement http://bit.ly/bcH0n0 http://bit.ly/9ZWFk3
Reading: Did Google Just Kill Boxee, Roku and TiVo? http://bit.ly/acq1m3 | Your thoughts?
Great video of the mural painters; thanks for the link.
‘Up There’ is pretty cool Fred.Content sells and seeing this makes me want to get Boxee set up and in use again.
Video takes too long for me at the moment if it’s not Netflix with Michelle. I’d rather read if I have spare moments of my own time. That said I’d love to come back and watch a bunch of great content videos when I retire :)For information transfer their time cost/ data rate is too high. Maybe if Michelle got into Boxee we could watch together but it probably wouldn’t be what I’d watch it for (university lectures, conferences, startup centric Tv).
This really depends on the content and whether it uses the visual element. For example, I would have preferred to have the transcript of this talk by Marc Andreesen: http://ecorner.stanford.edu…. At an hour long, it is a bit of a slog. Great content, but I would have gotten just as much from a transcript.This talk on monetary rewards being a poor motivator would lose a lot without the video:http://www.fastcompany.com/…
Mor social than ever…
Television and video are not the same. Their use cases in the home are very different. Their business models are not the same (and will diverge further soon). Video is about content consumption. Television is about companionship. The TV is on 8 hours a day in most households for companionship, not content consumption.The video industry has already been disrupted several times (by the home vcr, by blockbuster, then by netflix) and is being disrupted again now (by netflix streaming, boxee, roku, hulu and all the various flavors of VOD). The television industry has not been so disrupted.
Erik – I think you are right in the case of daytime TV viewers but in the case of a busy family I think TV is being disrupted because the use of TV in that case is all about content consumption.In the UK we have something called Sky+ which if you haven’t heard of it is basically a Tivo box provided by Sky (UK satellite TV provider owned by Rupert Murdoch) We hardly ever watch live TV in our household, we record any content we like the look of and watch it at our leisure. Which also means we skip any advertising, that type of behaviour has been extremely disruptive to the TV channel providers.
There’s more nuance here. I’ll put together a separate blog post.
great – looking forward to your insight
My day got complicated (in a good way). I meant to expand this more.http://sisyph.us/technology…
Erik – thanks for that, v interesting. I am amazed at the stat of 75% for background consumption.
WOW!I had no idea I was so out of touch with the reality of TV, video and internet convergence. Thanks for the quick easy reframing. It was both clear and sticky.
i often agree with erik but thus far in this beef i am on richard’s side….eagerly awaiting erik’s blog
Great point
Erik, thnx for your comments and your post.Companionship=Social or so it seems, and that is the drive behind the movement for connected or SocialTV and the slew of TV Apps.”Their business models are not the same (and will diverge further soon).” Where do you think this is going? Nothing avoids being disrupted…isn’t TV next?
“The video industry has already been disrupted several times (by the home vcr, by blockbuster, then by netflix) and is being disrupted again now (by netflix streaming, boxee, roku, hulu and all the various flavors of VOD). The television industry has not been so disrupted. “This sounds smart but isn’t, the ‘home vcr’ didn’t disrupt the ‘video industry’ (I suppose by this you mean recorded video), it created it. Blockbuster likewise didn’t ‘disrupt’ the ‘video industry’, it just slowly expanded it over a decade.”The television industry has not been so disrupted. ” The television industry has been ‘disrupted’ many times, if your video examples above are supposed to represent ‘disrupted’. Cable TV disrupted the television industry, Sat TV disrupted television, VCRs and DVRs (tivo) disrupted television just to name a few.
I like the ideas behind Boxee, but have been frustrated with the software every time I’ve tried it. Video streaming is consistently sluggish and I’ve had responsiveness problems with the UI (using just a mouse with my TV setup).I figured the streaming problems were due to the wireless connection, but I have no problems with streaming Netflix and Hulu on the same PC.
use of mouse with Boxee is sub-optimal. it is really designed for use with a remote (up-down-left-right-select-back), and could also be used with a keyboard.re the streaming. it should work as well (or as bad) as Firefox. if you’ll reach out to me with your system information i’ll try to help (avner AT boxee)
Joe, you may want to try http://www.clicker.tv
I actually just saw Up There through Arnold’s Facebook -in my feed. Totally right about the recommendation.Which leads me to another point: Content is not only about whether or not it is consumable and on what terms (we agree that Arnold and I both watched it and liked it and we did it at different times of day and through slightly different means); it’s about the ability to build common cultural connections through the ability to share content. And share has broad terms. It may be a hear and now moment (as in live broadcast watching of sports) and then talking about said moment, or it may be that we all saw said movie/tv episode within a period of a month and now we are having coffee and talking about the implications of it.In a totally irreverent comment: if you see up there, the advertisement painters are totally right about proportion and color and painting. And about color mixing. and the richness of paint versus vinyl.
Great comment shana. Sharing has always been cultually significant but it has become a lot easier recently
Have you ever read “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Walter Benjamin)? One of the critical ideas he brings up is that mechanical reproducibility (his idea was film/photography- the same criticique applies to all digital works though) gives art unto the masses and changes the inherent meaning of the work. Things lose meaning/or meaning changes because “authentic” loses meaning without a culture of wealth vs poverty. With many editions, so comes many meanings, although one becomes agreed upon. “The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one.”
No I haven’t read that book. I will pick it up
It’s a short essay- don’t bother buying it, because it is free here:http://www.marxists.org/ref…(yes I know the link has the word marxist in it- yet they tend to put up a lot of the great 20th century philosophical classics, or at least parts of it online, it’s a standard translation)
Re pulling from Twitter and FB: great feature– but one has to set it up first. And IMO it’s not clear how to do that looking at http://www.boxee.tv and selecting ‘feeds’ and ‘services’. Someone explaining that here could help the readers.
ok, just played with this some more: the answer is in Services (not Feeds), but the current wording threw me off– it implied that my feed would be shared OUT rather than importing from my friends. Once you go through with it (some folks might not unless worded better), you see both options.If you go ahead and add Twitter, after logging in, it does gives a 2nd checkbox to import the feed.Adding FB seems to have added the outward post by default (after I told it not to do that by default, btw), but not the import– I’d want the exact opposite.But very cool– this feature is huge!– definitely a channel to watch when relaxing after dinner.
Excellent pointDo you think it should be automatic if someone connects boxee to twitter and/or fb?
nope. The language should be clearer about ability to tweet *out* (most commonly referred to as “share”), as well as ability to consume *in* (commonly referred to as from “feed”). Yes- share in this context differs from its actual english definition. Have both boxes *unchecked* until you opt in.particularly confusing right now is the current existence of the tabs “Feeds” and “Services”– the picture in this post says “Feed”, but if someone wants to do this themself and clicks on the Feeds tab, they’ll be immediately lost. Or if I come back later to tweak that Feed I’ll go out of my trying to find out where to change it.from the company’s viral marketing perspective, tweet out could be automatic, but it pisses me off when an app I signed up for starts auto-tweeting my usage by default and I don’t notice. So don’t do it!! (cue: white lines…)
I agree that it is not clear enough.we’re in the process of re-designing our registration process, which will make it easier to set up your FB and Twitter accounts.
thanks for a really kickass feature, Avner!
I had not checked the Boxee bookmarklet yet. Thanks for pointing that out. We have been doing some super early tests with Watchbox (http://www.watchboxit.com) to address the same need you mentioned – save videos to watch later. (Though my need become more important from wanting to save all the videos my 3 yrs old son liked in one place.)I agree with Erik’s comments, thought I have seen that the iPad is changing the way I watch TV(?). I think a lot also depends on what your personal situation is: single, single but busy, married, married with kids, kids who are young versus old etc. I haven’t really watch TV in a really long long time the way I watched before we had kids. Right now its all in bits – a few minutes during dinner and so on. With the iPad I am able to watch a little more as I just watch it wherever I have sometime.I haven’t yet used Boxee as much as I would have liked to, but hoping to get it work for me.
Just went to the Boxee website and watched the video introduction to Boxee. I think it’s an interesting concept, but I’m not sure that it will catch on – I definitely agree with the points that were brought up by Erik
just played with this a bit. I see the beginnings of a social graph-curated, powerful, fun alternative to traditional tv. It could really use an auto-play feature, a la http://nowmov.com, including a prominent “Next” key to skip to next video.that service I just referenced (Ashton Kutcher is involved) sounded good in theory, but way too auto-pilot and random for my tastes. I think videos culled from my personal feeds would prove more interesting and entertaining. Enter Boxee.
I was so distressed recently for you when you explained your email inbox hell with no time to ever really get on top of it – until I realized today you spend most of your time watching videos and playing with your gadgets 🙂
I think that the big media companies that are trying to merge TV & the internet just don’t get it.Here’s what I’m saying… from a consumer’s point of view:There are multiple sources from where I can get my media (traditional or online) boxee, itunes, apple tv, youtube, roku, dvd, blur ray, regular cable, netflix and now Google TV. As a consumer, let’s call each one of these channels. I don’t care where I get my media from, as long as I’m getting what I really wanna watch, for the price that I wanna pay. Period. If I really wanna ditch cable, and go totally online, what actually happens is that I end up buying 3-5 different set top boxes (and more), as opposed to just one from the regular cable company, if I want my preferred viewing choices. There’s no one answer or a standardized box. Now this is happening as we move from a 50 year old technology to a more recent one (internet). And I bet there are ton’s of consumers who are holding off purchasing or committing to a medium until they find out which one’s gonna win or be the dominant/standardized player. The same thing with consumers who will commit their dollars towards one medium TV (like the build-in internet TVs with only one choice). The risk remains too high in selecting the potential winner. As for me, here’s what I did: I weighed on what I really watch online, and what media I want. Blu-ray and Netflix for streaming, and I went with the PS3, but you betcha there are tons of holes to be filled in. Just my $0.02.