Today I got a chance to talk to @jmburros of GetGlue. I had missed his presentation at #BigBoulder and was happy when he reached out after the event and offered to discuss how data is impacting GetGlue. I had four questions prepared . . .
Q: What was your biggest takeaway from Big Boulder?
A: The thing that struck me was how many companies were using social data. I was impressed by how fast they became educated. The next question is whether or not they’re you using it the right way? Will people be able to derive value or are they simply on the bandwagon? For some businesses, the data will touch the core of the business but not for all. The dust hasn’t really settled. I really liked the construction company that was using social data to figure out where to put the next Wal Mart.
Q: What did I miss at #BigBoulder?
A: We’re a 2nd screen consumer product for television & movies. We have a high level of engagement in our product. Not just around big events – we saw 170,000 check-ins for the Oscars but also 160,000 check-ins for True Blood premiere. We offer a different kind of engagement than Twitter — deeper and evenly distributed with more interaction through comments. (diagram below) The dataset is a community sentiment at its deepest. TV is a big part of what we do but movies holds a lot of promise as well. One of our most notable use cases is the Nikita community, which has 1.39 million viewers but had 130,000 GetGlue checkins in a week. 10%!! That’s amazing.
Note: The show, movie or song in this case, is the social object. This makes finding like-minded people incredibly easy. Instead of searching for hashtags on Twitter you simply login. The Oscars vs. True Blood example is what I would classify as the difference between viral and social. Twitter is viral, while GetGlue is social.
Q: What about being able to check-in/share hard to find content? It seems like there could be a lot of value in Longtail content. For example, I tried to check-in to a documentary on Koenigsegg’s Super Performance car on YouTube but could not.
A: Let me first say that I’m not a product manager. That said, we’re currently focused on mainstream content and helping brands connect with their communities. While many social venues have 10% of the community creating the lion share of the content, GetGlue is much more evenly distributed. Because of this, we believe this is where we can add a lot of value.
Q: What do you believe the future of social television is?
A:  Giving people a better platform to talk about shows they’re watching and discover conversations and content.  TV is inherently social and we’re building on that. How can we help you find shows you’d like and people who have the same tastes. That is the near-term future of social television.
My conversation with Jesse was interesting and found that he compared GetGlue more with Twitter than Foursquare. Even though the check-in is at the core of what they both do. (Although Foursquare user behavior is changing.)
I like GetGlue even though I don’t watch much television and expect them to continue to grow as more people embrace media stacking. I’m trying to check-in to more music and something other than Pixar films. We’ll see how that goes!
I also think it will be interesting to see how tribes emerge within GetGlue and would be very curious to see how those tribes line up/differ with tribes on other social venues like Instagram, Foursquare and Twitter.
