Must See Tweet-V? Comcast and Twitter Team Up on “See It” Button
If there’s one thing there’s no shortage of, it’s stuff to watch on the Internet. Between Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu Pluls, your video watching options are pretty endless. But if you want to actually watch what’s being broadcast on television—well, for that, you’ll generally have to actually flip on your TV. But today Twitter and cable provider Comcast announced a deal that’ll start to roll out a “See It” button, which will allow users to live-stream TV shows to their computers or mobile devices.
As you may know, Comcast owns NBC Universal, and as such, it seems as though shows on NBC and other subsidiary networks—CNBC, MSNBC, USA, SyFy, Bravo, Oxygen, E!, and a few more—will get first priority for promotion through the deal. Programs announced to be getting the “See It” button bump include “The Voice (NBC), The Blacklist (NBC), Chicago Fire (NBC), The Michael J. Fox Show (NBC), Sunday Night Football (NBC), Access Hollywood, NHL, Premier League Soccer, Sochi Olympics (NBC and NBCSN), Today Show (NBC), Psych (USA) and Suits (USA),” though the press release announcing the partnership hints that there are others coming soon as well.
According to a post on AllThingsD, the “See It” button will start appearing in Tweets later this Fall, though it’s not entirely clear how users will see those Tweets right out of the gate. The post explains that “the initial version sounds like it will be clunky, because it will require Twitter users to link to official NBC Universal Web pages in order to generate the ‘See It’ button.”
Comcast doesn’t quite clear up the practical usage of the “See It” button either:
“It’s activated through a simple one-time log-in to Xfinity TV, just like customers do when signing into their email, Twitter or other account. Once they log in they will be one or two clicks away from instantly watching the shows or movies they see in a tweet.”
But when will I see the “See It” button? Will it just appear when someone’s talking about a show? Do I have to Tweet about the show for it to appear on my own feed? Is Twitter going to become some kind of television-based genie, wherein I ask to see a show and then it lets me?
The exact integration between these two services seems a little undetailed—but that’s probably because I have yet to experience just how it’ll work. Twitter itself is kind of a confusing proposition that doesn’t make much sense until you actually try it out. So I’m not too surprised that the details of how the partnership will effect Twitter and Comcast users on a practical level aren’t yet clear.
Since I get my Internet and super-basic TV services through Comcast, I’ll get the chance to find out later this Fall. Stay tuned.