Feed Me, Seymour

Rocketboom is now available on Tivo.

I first heard of Rocketboom when their New Yorker-on-the-street segment on “Firefox or IE?” made the rounds here at Mozilla.

We got a huge kick out of the video, for obvious reasons.

So it was cool to find out they’re getting access to Tivo users. I’m S.O.L. as I cancelled cable service a couple of years ago, and using Tivo on my crappy over the air reception would be an even more masochistic act than weeding out comment spam on this blog.

But it got me to thinking.

When you push video as Rocketboom has till now exclusively over the Web, you’re reaching viewers in a less than relaxed state. I mean this both physically and mentally. When I’m on the Web, 99.9% of the time I’m sitting in a chair, either at home or at work. On top of the obvious comfort constraint on settling in to watch something online, my Web video attention span is also shortened because I’m either in the midst of work, or I recall some other meatspace thing I need to do, and so cut off the video I was watching to get on with the task.

The use case for watching video on my TV is almost exactly the opposite. I settle into the couch, and commit to watching a movie or sports broadcast for significantly longer than I would on my computer. I’m definitely multi-tasking some of the time, but when I’m engaged by the video I’m watching, it takes precedence over reading the paper, making a phone call, etc.

None of this analysis is new. I bring it up because the form factor for Rocketboom’s content has been 3-5 minute clips, designed for the attention dynamics of Web viewers. I’m curious to see if they adapt their content for an audience that has the luxury of engaging more deeply with their videos, because they’re cold chilling on fine barcaloungers.

Ah yes. Popcorn on the settee, alpha waves releasing the endorphin buzz only fine TV can deliver. Daydream nation dead ahead.