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Buy From Amazon With Your TiVo
PunkOfLinux writes "From The NYTimes comes news that TiVo and Amazon have reached an agreement to allow consumers to purchase products from Amazon through their television sets using their TiVo remote control. TiVo will launch the new service to consumers by merchandising products related to several high-profile programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Colbert Report, and Burn Notice. Broadband-connected Series2, Series3, and TiVo HD DVRs will be able to take advantage of the new feature." This sounds like the latest incarnation of the dream of television executives who in the early '90s talked about the "information superhighway," before it was clear that the Internet was going to fill that role. What they envisioned was "interactive TV," i.e. buying stuff with your remote.
Actually, the news item made it sound like Amazon went back to the 90's thinking. My point was that there are ways of doing this in a really good way. I also provided Apple as a good example of this.
You say I am an Apple fan boy, but I really am not. In fact, I really dislike the iPhone and I can't stand OSX. Just because I point to Apple doesn't mean that I praise them.
Full Tilt
Remember when Walmart.com or Blockbuster.com or whoever it was had to pull their recommended movie service because of terribly innapropriate recommendations? How well will this TiVo/Amazon service be run, and how are they going to recommend products based on TV shows, will they be picked by humans? Will they use a super-complex inhuman computer algorithm?
I see you are watching "History of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre", can I recommend "A Box of Semi-sweet dark chocolates in a red-velvet heart-shaped box with free plush teddy-bear"?
Eggs
Milk
Bread
Cat Litter
Soda
TiVo's idea is not to distract you from what you're watching, but just to pair up items plugged on popular shows with items Amazon sells, and throwing something like a "Press ThumbsUp for more info." to see the price, sign in Amazon account info, and get a 1-click purchase in.
Last time I was bored at my friend's house, I calculated that in less than 15 minutes I could charge off around USD $2000 in porn using just the remote.
Cars aren't so scary compared with trying to resell pay-per-view porn.
A friend of mine worked at a marketing agency where she worked with a prototype system similar to this, howeverit was even more interactive. At any given time during a show, you could:
1) Hit the pause button
2) Point the remote at the TV which controles a mouse like cursor (think Wii Remote)
3) Point to car\shirt\bag\etc that happened to be on the screen at the time
4) Click it and be directed to a 'buy it now' interface
The idea is that companies would pay the show for product placement adding to the revenue of the show and ... dare I say... eliminate the need for commercials.
The only problem I foresee with this approach is increasingly blatant product placement within shows which WILL get to the point of being distracting, much like commercials are today.
The mindset was always producer/consumer, where we happy consumers cheerfully watch what the TV companies decide to send to us. Ideas such as adding a shop, or choosing endings and camera angles never really worked because people either want a lot more control over that, or want someone else to deal with it.