At CES we wrote about Peel launching more social features within their app that can also control your TV via universal remote functionality. Their technology is embedded into the Samsung Galaxy, and now they’ve launched a brand new engagement platform at SXSW that will coincide with the finalist episodes of American Idol. Peel demoed the new tools for Lost Remote last week when they explained that the real-time sentiment tools will facilitate “cheering and booing with the audience, rating the performances, judging the judges, and predicting the results – including which unlucky contestant will be voted off the show that week.”
“Each week, Peel will be sharing the results from the American Idol Experience, including the leaderboard results and a qualitative graph of highlights (cheers) and lowlights (boos) from the show,” a Scott Ellis, the VP of Marketing for Peel told Lost Remote. “The ‘leaderboard’ will tell an illustrative story of how the Peel community feels about the performances, contestants, judges’ feedback and overall show outcome,” he added.
While Peel doesn’t have an any official partnership with Fox’s American Idol, they have created a tangible reward for the participation. “To celebrate the new platform, Peel will be giving away an all expenses paid trip to Hollywood for four, including VIP passes to the Idols Live concert this summer,” according to their release.
The real-time booing and cheering feature was very fun and addictive to play with. You can “boo” and “cheer” as many times as you want, and based on what everyone else is tapping you can affect the meter. There are still some details to work out — like the idea that when people are tapping they’re going to want to see change in the meter right away regardless of the mass sentiment — but the company is already thinking about which features to add next. No one has perfectly nailed the sentiment/intent equation of the social TV mix, but this is a step in the right direction.