Eyecon woke me up to Facebook’s potential as a media sharing platform. I met the team at the Digital Hollywood conference last week. I knew going into the show that: 1) Media sharing is on the rise, 2) Movie studios are putting more content online and 3) New consumer electronics can connect to the Internet. But it took the entrepreneurs at Eyecon Technologies to connect the dots, and show me Facebook’s potential as a dominant media sharing platform.
The New “Digital Home”
You may not know it, but you already live in the digital home of the future. And Facebook works in your digital home!
Your Mac, Windows 7 PC, iPhone and your new IP-connected TV can all share media with each other. If your phone, TV and laptop are all connected to the same wireless network, then those devices can talk to each other using Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and DNLA technologies.
Your devices come from the store ready to work as media players for media files located on other devices (pictures, movies and MP3s). DNLA devices can share media easily between themselves in your home or from sources across the Internet – like photos and media uploaded to Facebook.
Digital Home Innovation
9000 consumer electronic devices are DNLA compatible. Digital Entertainment entrepreneurs are creating innovate ways to share media in the home. Eyecon’s solution is to use your mobile app as a kind of universal remote control.
EyeconTroller App (iPhone, iPad, Android)
Search for EyeconTroller in Apple’s App Store or the Android App Market to try this out. Or click here for Android and here for iPhone/ iPad.
Eyecon’s apps have tens of thousands of app downloads to date.
EyeconTroller and Facebook
EyeconTroller lets you access Facebook content. All your photos / friends photos come up as folders on EyeconTroller. Your connected devices are automatically discovered on your home network and listed in their application. You then just drag and drop these photos onto a connected TV using your finger.
Better yet, you don’t even have to log in to your Facebook account on the TV that you are viewing photos on (like when using a Facebook widget on Yahoo! Connected TV). You just need to log into the EyeconTroller app on your phone – and Eyecon does the work of getting media from Facebook to your TV.
Best of all, things get truly social because multiple Facebook accounts can all send media to the same computer or TV at the same time. No more taking turns logging into Facebook. No more worrying about entering your password into a stranger’s computer to show them Facebook photos!
Will Facebook Dominate the Digital Home?
Facebook says its future growth will occur off the Facebook.com site. Technologies like Facebook Connect and Open Graph enable web sites to incorporate Facebook’s social graph into their sites, and 1 million sites have done so! Now technologies like Eyecon are emerging to help you integrate your Facebook experience throughout your home.
I can’t help but think back to when the Facebook Photos application took off. Facebook Photos was relatively simple (no high resolution photos, etc.), but became a top photo sharing site almost instantly. It was a hit because Photos operated on top of Facebook’s social graph – enabling photo sharing in new and engaging ways simply because it was part of the Facebook experience. Media sharing applications could experience a similar acceleration.
Facebook came to dominate media sharing at the same time entertainment studios rushed to put their content online. This puts Facebook and entertainment majors are on collision course, with both seeking control over how media is shared, discovered and consumed. Its like Sean Parker and Napster all over again, but with Facebook!
Facebook has 500+ million people sharing content in a social way. However, “social” is not in the DNA of traditional media companies. Entertainment studios rely on channels, not consumers, to deliver their content (retail for DVDs, cable for TV shows, etc.) and they don’t have Facebook’s fundamental understanding of how to connect with consumers directly.
My prediction?
Media companies should plan on Facebook sending them a majority of their direct to consumer traffic in the future!
Source: All Facebook
Wednesday, October 27, 2010