LocateTV Blog

Picture the scene: eight of the UK’s coolest TV and film bloggers, four of us from LocateTV, M&S chocolate mini-rolls, a bunch of computers, a lot of raucous debate and discussion (and thankfully a lot of enthusiasm), all rounding up with dinner and alcohol (and more raucous debate and discussion) in a restaurant in Soho.

Yes, LocateTV Beta is alive…and a very fun delivery it was too. Our ‘triallist event’ last night was a chance for the first few outsiders to get their hands on the site, discuss it, ask questions, make suggestions, and generally kick off a dialogue that we hope will grow and deepen as we develop LocateTV in the coming tender weeks of its infancy. It was excellent to get feedback on first impressions and user experiences of the site; our developer Pete wrote so many notes his hand is still aching, and the comments are already helping us prioritise the refinements and future additional features for the site.

Bottom line: they thought (we think) it was pretty great, well designed and most importantly filled a gaping hole in the market. A recurring comment was LocateTV is all very nice in theory, but it isn’t until you start using it that you really realise how addictive and useful it is on an everyday basis. On first impressions, there was praise for the simplicity and effectiveness of the basic proposition and design, the fact that we are focusing on finding out where and when things are on, rather than inundating users with information or gossip or gimmicky add-ons. Within minutes of accessing the site one of the bloggers was on his phone programming his Sky plus for a programme he had found for that evening (yes, PVR booking is planned at some point…)

After Colin described his own motorbike clip epiphany, it turned out that nearly every blogger had their own story of struggling to find where to see content they had missed or been recommended, or how to pass on that information to viewers on their sites. This meant they were very enthusiastic about the embed feature - which plants a dynamically updated widget on a blog, email or forum that’s always relevant to the region and time of the viewer - especially as so many sites and forums have members from both the UK and US. However, as we suspected, our initial widget design is too big to be feasible, so our designers are now looking at some alternative, neater versions.

There were also suggestions about what extra information should be provided for each show, such as aspect ratio and subtitles. It was interesting to see what the triallists were searching for most, and therefore what data it is most important for us to have covered at launch - it did tend to be obscure and childhood programmes as much as mainstream content, and they were searching by actor and crew member at least as often as show title.

Our programmers are already sorting out some glitches and data gaps spotted by the attendees. On their recommendations, we are prioritising making the search more intuitive and sophisticated (finding shows despite mis-spelled or incomplete titles) and implementing keyword search, as well as creating those smaller widgets for the embedding.

We know this is only the beginning. This morning our bloggers and forum members are in possession of their shiny new passwords and usernames and are busy running LocateTV through its paces from the comfort of their own computers. We’re hoping for lots more feedback which we will incorporate into the site development as directly as possible.

We already have a list of most of the people we are inviting to the private beta phase, but if you’re interested, remember to register and we’ll see what we can do. Mini-rolls not included.

Lottie