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Television Interactivity: Permanently Breaking the Fourth Wall

A company’s new app represents a bold effort to keep customers’ attention on their TVs while also making a statement about the future of digital media interaction.
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Article written by guest writer Kecia Lynn

What’s the Latest Development?

GetGlue, a kind of entertainment-focused version of Facebook, has recently unveiled a new app that will “bring you the best related content about your favorite shows to the second screen” – the second screen being that iPad or whatever digital device you’re tinkering with while the first screen, your TV, is on. The company hopes that, instead of playing Angry Birds Space while the referees debate a call, you’ll use its app to get more information about your favorite shows, follow up on its suggestions for new shows you might enjoy, and chat with your fellow TV-watchers, wherever they may be.

What’s the Big Idea?

Writer Kit Eaton believes that GetGlue is one of several current and future products designed to take advantage of our shortened attention spans and ever-increasing hunger for more content. Television will no longer be “a one-way window into another world you can’t touch anymore. It’ll be a discovery engine, a way to learn facts, interact with the world, talk to people, find new and surprising content to absorb.” In other words, we’re getting closer to the day when size will be the only thing separating the screen on your living room wall from the screen in your hand.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

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