exploremusic

I was sort of surprised that there was no login requirement for last night’s YouTube event with U2.  Navigate to the U2 channel—links where everywhere on YouTube, so it was easy—and there it was. 

But that doesn’t mean Google didn’t acquire terabytes of data on the audience.  They know exactly how many people tuned in from where and from how long.  They know what kind of bandwidth got sucked up by whom.  All this can be used for future R&D.  The question is what did Google learn from this experiment?  A lot, I’m sure.

What we saw last night is a tiny taste of our IPTV future.  We’re beginning to see TVs with Ethernet ports and wireless Internet access.  Watching online content will be as easy as changing the input from your remote.  Yes, yes, I know people with Xboxes and Mac Mini set-ups were able to do that last night, but this still requires another piece of hardware.  Ethernet-ready TVs will eliminate that.  Only when people like my mom and dad understand this technology will things really begin to change.

Last night was also a confluence of other forms of new media.  Like I said, 1,000 tweets per second were coming off the stream towards the end.  Meanwhile, untold millions where having their own Twitter conversations.  People were posting status reports on Facebook while others set up special chat rooms.  Millions of connections, all in real time.

No wonder both Microsoft and Google have signed deals with Twitter.  Done right, the data available from real-time search can be incredibly valuable.  Think about it:  being able to sift through what people all over the world are talking about right at this instant.  This is where Twitter has a chance to make a sh*tload of money.

If you haven’t seen the show yet, it’s available on a loop.  Get the link from www.u2.com