Historical Meta Data…A ‘You’ Party

With the current debate on the market between Blueray and HDdvd, i’m at the point in my personal experience where i’m completely moving away from physical media, and not just because of format wars.

I recently upgraded to a Series 3 HD Tivo Box (and forgive me for posting about Tivo again, its only a means to illustrating a point) and that opened up the ability for me to use Tivo’s new service with Amazon, Amazon Unbox with Tivo.  On the Tivo site it’s describe as the ” new TiVo feature that lets you rent or buy movies online from Amazon Unbox, download them to your TiVo box over your home network, and enjoy them right on your television set whenever you want.  With a TiVo box and a broadband connection, you never have to drive to the video store or wait for a DVD to arrive in the mail again.” 

The ‘never have to drive to the video store’ or Netflix (reading inbetween the lines here) again was what i was drawn too being completely incapable with my current scehdule of keeping track of rentals of any kind. I am personally responsible for building out the section of my hometown library from childhold late fees. And as much as i love the rec engines etc. in netflix, i’ve had the same three movies for months. I need things to be a little bit more disposable.  I loved that i didn’t have to worry about going or doing anything other then clicking. Oh the joy of digital media!

But what i discovered when i went to Amazon to sign myself up was the fun of leveraging all my personal meta data which amazon has collected over the last five years and having it play a role in helping me pick and choose what content to have waiting for me on my Tivo box. 

As we explore the power of communities, social networks, who and what are influencers for our clients and agency partners, it became clear to me in an instant that i loved having access to all that long tail data about myself. It was exciting and an experience i didn’t realize i was going to have by forgoing the physical media.  I rediscovered music i had bought years ago and it lead me to digging into more content that i was interested in. And then some plogs (Amazon content related blogs driven by search) and a bit of listamania. 

The experience of this historical meta data was fascinating personally. It was a ‘me’ party with content waiting for me when i got home…completely tailored to my desires (okay, i  choose to watch Borak finally, not really completely in my rec’s but Amazon’s top picks). 

Now the question for any brand to ask is how do we build some immersive experiences for our consumers? How do we leverage loyalty programs, marketing data, feedback and consumer generate content in a way that brings real value to information, on a whole new personalized level. And not just provide a cool contest or a fun promotion, but provide real services based on all this data that’s out there. Can we break into legacy data systems and leverage them in this Web2.0 world?  Time will tell… No more late fees for me!