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From small startups aiming for the stars to major TV networks, 2014 had its share of breakthrough apps from every corner of the media realm. Some presented new ways of discovering or experiencing content, some packaged familiar content in fresh, inventive ways that made it seem new again and some were just a delightful treat that brightened our day.
N3twork’s Tinder-inspired UI couldn’t be simpler: A video pops up on your device, you press down to watch it then and there or swipe right to store and watch later. Don’t like it? You guessed it – swipe left and move on to the next one. The thousands and thousands of hours of available content are curated from sites like YouTube and Bloomberg and many more by a team of humans, but you create your own “channels” by selecting subject categories that interest you and employing hashtags to narrow things down even further within broad categories. But as cool as it is to use, N3twork offers more than just impressive fun factor. As its name suggests, it uses but three commands (Left, Right, Center) to make sense of the overwhelmingly vast ocean of Internet video that threatens to drown us all. N3twork turns it all into, well, a network, but one entirely planned and programmed by you. That’s not just fun – it’s the future.
Where N3twork plunges boldly into the future by letting YOU program your own Internet video network, Pluto innovates the very same content by remaining squarely in the present – namely, by acting just like a traditional network. Designed for your phone, tablet or desktop, its interface looks exactly like what you’d see on any cable box’s TV guide, with more than 100 free channels scrolling neatly in numerical order beneath the main viewing window. Paired with a schedule of upcoming episodes, a non-discerning viewer might even mistake this service for cable, until they noticed channels with names such as “Cats 24/7,” “Real Estate” and “Weird Al Yankovic.” A team of human curators even packages thematically similar vids as 30-minute or hour-long “episodes.” It’s another much-needed way of making sense of the vastness of Internet video, without taking you out of your comfort zone.
Cartoon Network and sister channel Adult Swim have never wanted for stoking the flames of viewers’ loyalty. But CN Sayin’ took things to another level, inviting fans to record themselves doing impressions of characters from Adventure Time, Regular Show, Clarence and other hits, and submitting them through the app for consideration as Thursday night promos. Not only does the concept encourage viewers to engage with their favorite toons on a deeper level, but it encourages tune-in – to see if your imitation made the cut! Plus, while we would never dream of taking anything away from our industry, the notion of user-generated promo via app seems like one with unlimited potential…
In contrast to the in-your-face, kid-friendliness of CN Sayin’, the Ken Burns app is a quiet and contemplative yet transformative repackaging of PBS’ greatest filmmaker. Rather than waste time using the app to convert Burns’ hours-long passion projects into a tiny-screen mobile viewing experience (most of them are on Netflix anyway, if you’re really hankering to watch a 10-hour jazz documentary on your iPhone), the offering takes an intuitive approach, collecting “playlists” of Burns clips under themes in American history such as “Race” and “Leadership.” There’s plenty of Burns content to peruse, but it’s in short form, in bite-sized nuggets that inform each other and in so doing, use his majestic oeuvre to illustrate patterns in the American story. In the playlist “Race,” for example, you’ll see how moments from The Civil War, Baseball, Thomas Jefferson and Jazz relate and intersect. It’s an experience that truly re-imagines this content for the mobile space – would that every TV-related app strove for such invention.
Designed by Amsterdam-based agency Woedend!, Pitcher is the first and only app (that we know of) designed for no other purpose than to improve the agency-client pitch process. Initially conceived of as a joke to draw attention to the kinks in the system, Pitcher blossomed into a viable way to help connect brands seeking project pitches with the agencies most suited to pitch to that particular project. Quick and easy to use, it lets the brand in question enter a set of parameters, quickly rifles through a database of area agencies, produces a list of top five matches with contact info, and boom the client is off and running. It’s so simple, it’s hard to imagine why it wasn’t thought up sooner, especially given the state of pitching today, which tips the scale of power heavily toward the client. Pitcher cuts through that to assess the meat of the pitch and who is right for it. It’s currently only stocked with Holland-based profiles, but it can’t get to America and beyond soon enough.
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