The 'Watch Party' Trend Sweeping the Video World Amid Lockdown

TV show or movie that they watched simultaneously. There's many companies trying to crack that nut, including Senor, who's co founder and CEO, Joe Braidwood, is with me today to discuss this trend. Hello Joe, Hi, Andrew, good to be here. Thanks for coming. Virtually speaking, virtual co viewing is definitely a trend with some serious heat. You're getting some record traffic. We'll get to that, but I want for you to explain first what exactly Senior is really described the product

so people get a sense of it exactly. We call ourselves the virtual Movie Theater, and what we mean by that is we are at an extension for Chrome, the web browser, that enables you to synchronize your playback when you're watching a movie or a show with friends UM in other locations. So really it's sort of Zoom meets

Netflix kind of concept. Got it. And you and I met back in when you had first launched, and I was excited about the product and I saw a potential in it that I felt was never really realized when what you might call social TV was a bigger trend many years ago. So here you guys come, and here the pandemic comes, and it really changed the reception in

the marketplace for your product, did it not? Yeah? Absolutely, I think sort of prior to the ademic, a lot of people predicted that this behavior would grow over time, but it hadn't really become mainstream. Most people who are doing it would be in long distance relationships or um, you know, on a tour of duty or away from home for a period of time. And obviously the social lockdowns and the social distancing that have been very much the main thrust of the last few weeks has really

changed that behavior set. People are craving social connectivity with people that they love and that they care about, and they're finding new and creative ways to spend time together, and co viewing is a great way to do that. So, I mean, you had mentioned some sort of extreme instances, but nowadays in the pandemic give us a sense of like what kind of coviewing experience, say, you know, a group of teenagers might have or maybe a different demographic. Yeah,

it's interesting. We see a lot of emails come to us from mother's planning birthday parties for their kids, which is acute and sort of unanticipated development for us. Um. We see a lot of people who run movie clubs or film clubs that are getting together on a Friday night to to to watch an old classic. Um. And you know, people who are usually spending time together on a day to day basis where they if their coworkers or students at a university, are doing this to just

stay connected to their to their peers. And it's a really really great way to do it. So what is the upside for something like this? I mean, do you see this as being, you know, a very mainstream activity in time? Does the pandemic accelerate perhaps that mainstreaming? Yeah, a great, A great sort of example of this is

you know, delivery services. The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of food and grocery and other good delivery services, and you know, we we see that that acceleration is just changing behavior over time, and when the pandemic is no longer so in focus, we still think people are going to shop with instacot and get their food from uberiats.

The same is true of co viewing. You know, it's a really fun, very convenient way to spend time with people that is engaging and um, you know, sort of take some of the focus off of trying to constantly entertain people, which you might have on a Zoom Happy Hour or another video chat. And so that sort of shared experience is something that we're all craving and we think that you know, making it painless and fun is going to be something that sort of continues for for

years to come. Now, you launched with the ability to create this coviewing experience around just a few select services like Netflix. More recently, you guys announced a partnership with HBO.

So what is that about. So as the pandemic was setting setting in over the last sort of couple of months, U some of the team in Seattle who work on on uh the HBO digital direct consumer products, reached out to us about, you know, a way to facilitate this for their audience, so we work with them and bringing support for HBO now and HBO go to the platform. And that's great because it enables people to enjoy some of the best content out there through the alternative services.

And our users have written to us since and really thanked us for doing that. You know. It really has created a way to sort of explore back catalogs of really great content with your friends in a way that you couldn't before. And have you seen a difference in the marketplace since the HBO deal kicked in? Is it giving you a new level of visibility? Yeah? I think you know, when you have prominent announcements with incredible brand slate like there's it really sort of raises your profile.

And we've had an incredible response from users and partners over the last few weeks. Um our usage has sort of multiplied several factors, uh, you know, and just the that the fact that people have been talking about us on social media in ways that they haven't before. We've seen a couple of TikTok videos go viral about us. It's been really an exciting time, uh. And I think it's it's really a rising tide for all co viewing services right now, Well, that's the thing. Let's let's give

a broader sense of what's going on here. I mean, frankly, I think if there's any one service that's kind of broken out from this pack, it would be the Netflix Party, which is also a Chrome. Addition, we've seen other services like House Party kind of extend themselves into this space. Frankly, I'm surprised Zoom hasn't already done this. So, you know,

how crowded a marketplace are you operating in. We like to think that what we're doing is very distinct because we are, um you know, we're built from the ground up to be respectful of content rights and we really want to be a partner for the industry to think about how they merchandise and build engagement around that the most exciting pieces of content. And you know, that's quite different to some of the other examples that you site, where it's more just about hanging out or bootstrapping ways

to sort of synchronize playback. So, you know, the fact that we're working with the industry and the fact that we enable video chats synchronized with playback, those are two unique traits to what we're doing, and we think that it really Um, you know, it makes for a very interesting conversation about what the future of coviewing looks like. Well, what's it been like in terms of your relationships with

Hollywood to get these copyrights in place? I mean, do content do I P owners understand the coviewing trend even a year ago? Do they take it seriously? Do they see the potential? Yeah? I think that things are really quickly sort of evolving. Um, just in terms of the conversations we've been having since the announcement. Um, you know, a few months ago, a lot of the marketing around a big show or a big move in particular big

movie would be around the theatrical release. And we know we've seen some very interesting stuff happen with um some of these sort of premiere we can debuts a big big big shows and big movies where you know, people pay to watch it, um, you know, as as soon as it comes out, rather than waiting for the theatrical runs. And you know, so that is the beginning of what we see as this sort of this very very new, very very exciting trend around creating really really engaging home

entertainment experiences out of theatrical content. Um. And I think you know, the other thing that is rapidly evolving is the is the subscription video on demand landscape, and um, you know, anything that can differentiate the experience of enjoying shows and movies through these big esport services, you know, it can be a very very powerful tool around sort of engaging and retaining customers. So we're very excited about

these changes. So, I mean, it's great that you've got good relationships that allow you to get your hands on this content. On the flip side, I have to ask myself, well, why can't Netflix, for instance, just do this themselves. Do you have any concern? I mean, you've got enough competitors as as as it is big and small, But couldn't the rights holders themselves start to roll out this technology too? Yeah, it's it's it's it's conceivable that people who are building

these platforms could focus on this. Um. We haven't seen that happen yet. And I think that's really for two reasons. The primary reason is just staying competitive in terms of the quality level of an spond service with buffering times and with recommended content, and with all of the other staples that really are required in order to be successful.

That's that's a ton of work that's very hard, and you know, Netflix is really sort of trailblazing on that front, and a lot of the other services have been focused on how to sort of build features that stay competitive with Netflix. The second thing is around the psychographics of

of this behavior set. I think, you know, it's it's a lot easier for us, as a brand that's obsessed with this problem to focus on building features for it than it is for um, you know, a larger organization that has to cater to all of their customers and

all of their use cases. So we can build something that just works on Chrome, just on laptops, but building credible tracks behind that, Whereas if you are thinking about the sort of product roadmap at a larger organization like an Amazon or Hulu or a Netflix, they have to think about all of the devices, all of the markets, and so it's it's just it's harder to really get some momentum behind a breakout idea in that context, which

is why the startup ecosystem is so great for this. Well, let's get back though to Netflix Party, which to me seems to be before we should be clear, has no affiliation with Netflix UM seems to be the one that's sort of driving this trend, or would you even disagree

with that. I think Netflix Party is stow an incredible wave of growth at the very beginning of the pandemic because people were sort of desperate for new ways to connect and UM, you know, when you punch in how do I have a party on Netflix into Google, they came up because of their their name UM, that I think is an important thing to recognize, and they've done a great job a sort of capitalizing on that way.

The distinction though, is that it's actually just very, very difficult to make a really great product in this space. There's so much technical UM sort of requirements around sort of building a great synchronization algorithm, integrating great immersive experiences, and we've really been focused on that from a sort of quality level perspective of like building a product that that scales really well, that enables these rich and engaging experiences.

So the thing that we just have started rolling out this week is a feature set that enables many more people to come into the same coviewing experience UM in more of a sort of broadcast models. You can imagine someone who worked on a movie, or someone who acted in a show, or even someone who's just really funny watching a great piece of content and bringing their audience

to that situation. And that's a very different take on co viewing too, you know, pressing a button on the tool bar to to send a link to your friends to to sort of synchronize the playback, which is what Netflix Party does. So yeah, I think there's a lot of space in this market for different creative ways to tackle the problem of what really the trend that we're seeing here is this idea of hanging out virtually, it's this idea of being together when you're a part and um, yeah,

we're very excited about our particular strategy on this. I also wonder what the advertising play might be in all this.

Is that something I mean you're is there something to how advertising might work in a co viewing experience that might be different than traditional I think yeah that the probably the best way to think about that is to sort of consider what an AVOD platform like a Pluto TV or inn IMDbTV, how they have fewer barriers to entry, which is actually a great factor when you're thinking about inviting friends and bringing them together you know, at the moment,

in order to enjoy some content on sena need a subscription to Netflix, Rhbo Now or something like that. And what that means is there's this sort of a natural friction if one of your friends doesn't have a subscription, And so you know, looking at ad supportive video on demand and thinking about how that reduces the barrier to entry and how the biggest metrics for the team's working on those products is eyeballs and engagement. We could be

a very natural partner in that context. The other thing that we've been discussing with some some folks is this idea of being an influencer and having an audience and all of the sort of classic ways that influences already

monetized that our audiences on other social platforms. So, you know, product endorsements, podcast marketing has been a really interesting thing for us to think about and and yeah, I think there's a ton of opportunity there, But our primary objective right now is just to deliver a great experience to people viewing and to to grow. So um, we're sort

of not too immediately focused on the monetization piece. I want to get back to the different use cases you talked about a few minutes ago, because, as you said, it's not necessarily just about a group of friends coming together.

This could be something. And again this goes with you know, what is the strategy of a of a content rights holder to take people that are involved in a production, a star or director or writer or whatnot, and have them have these kind of hosted experiences really not unlike the content you might see in a DVD extra, but in an interactive, live sense. Um. I mean, do you have as big expectations for what that is as opposed

to the generic, you know friends model of this. Well, one of the most interesting things that we've seen over the last few weeks is people reach out to us to run events. Right, So it's not that you know, the analogy of DVD commentary makes the most sense if you think about the conventional way that you would engage with a director. But there's also incredible events that variety tears running. There's incredible events like Comic Con that's been canceled.

There's all sorts of opportunities across the industry where you might have an intimate audience with with someone that has been involved in a piece of content, and people are asking themselves, like, you know, Zoom doesn't really scale that well for that use case, especially if you're screening a premium piece of content. So maybe we could play a role in that. And yes, that is exactly what we're

focused on right now. It's it's obviously always in our interest to think about the consumer experience, but there is also a very very significant opportunity to think about you know, very very avid fans or prosumer sort of uh, you know, takes on what an event or a screening or a

premier may look like in the future. So it doesn't sound like you have concerns that, as you know, some have suggested, not necessarily specific to coviewing, that there will be a particular set of behaviors that occur in this unique pandemic period. But once things go back to normal, who knows how much things returned to the way they were.

Any concerns that co viewing could be a very temporary trend, No, And I think the best example of this is in video games, right you know, Fortnite and a number of other video games have done a really great job at integrating social features, and those have been sticky because people are inherently social, they want to spend time with others, But we're also inherently constrained by what we can physically accomplish in a day. So if you don't have to move around, and if you can still have a great

social experience, that's awesome. And we see this as the same. You know, there is so much convenience and so much social delight that comes from you know, kicking back with a group of friends or being part of the big fan experience around a piece of content. And we don't think that that's going to change when people can return to go into the more or to the workplace. How much you know, we've talked about you've got a broad

range of competitors out there, big and so mall. Twitch has been in this space, uh with some authorized content, and they've also been sued from sports leaks. It didn't like that their content was being transmitted with copyright infringement. How much illegal activity is going on here? Do you get a sense of you know, there are a lot of people who are just using Skype and and face

time to do this kind of group activity. Yeah, It's it's difficult to know because the majority of that stuff is peer to peer and you know, I think if you think about what happened in the music industries is a great example of what we are really focused on.

We are enabling fully compliant, copyright friendly coviewing experiences in the same way that Spotify would enable you to listen to your favorite bands and music without infringing copyright, and that over time, that that charts to what people actually want, because if people are passionate about content, and they're passionate about movies, they want to they want to put their dollars there, they want to be fans, they want to

embrace that content, and so um. You know, of course, every day we get emails from some some kids who used to use Rabbit, which closed down because it was struggling to scale because it was so so focused on the piracy use case. And you know, they say, well, this is this is weird. It didn't share my screen. Yeah, we're not. We're not in the industry of screen sharing and we're in the industry of delivering premium entertainment and

bringing your friends along for the ride. And I think that that's very exciting, and you know, we're focused on the right long term strategy there. But is your product a superior user experience from the illegal stuff, because as we've seen in an earlier age of Hollywood, where streaming copyright protected content wasn't really that much different in user experience in the illegal piracy, which has certainly not gone away,

I think it was an even bigger headache. Yeah, absolutely. Um. You know, you only have to be on a zoom with twenty people to realize that the quality level ball of the video calls goes down significantly, and then if someone shares some content on one of those feeds, it's

just not a good experience. And so we have worked tirelessly to make sure that the way that Sena works when you fire up the Chrome extension is it is writing on top of the content delivery networks of the services that you're watching that have been built from the

ground up to deliver premium viewing experiences. You still get that same high resolution, beautiful content, um, you know, direct from the source, and then you augment it with with with the social layer, and so it works incredibly well and the experience is superior. The same is true for the audio. You know, you can manage and have full control over the audio experience, so you can mute everyone that's in the room and just focus on the movie or show, or you can turn the movie or show

down and talk about it if it's a rerun. And and you know, giving people the freedom to really create their own experience. Here from a device perspective, you guys strictly work on a browser in a desktop scenario, not mobile, not on the TV screen itself. Correct, Yeah, I mean there are ways to leverage your laptop and plug it into your TV, and you can even use sort of Chrome casts. And we've had people right to us sort of being evangelical about the fact that they figured that out.

Um that we're at the beginning here. We've got a ton of work to do, and we're very hungry to get it done. Around deeper integrations, and those could take one of two forms. They could either be permissioned at the platform level, so a row coup or Apple TV or you know, a Visio or someone like that could could provide an API to allow us to know what content is being viewed and to change the shuttle controls

so that it's synchronized. Or we could partner directly with the content owners to to sort of bake this into their proprietary apps and and both of those are on the table. The beauty of Chrome as a platform is it is such an amazing way to sort of integrate deeply into these content experience too, in a way that doesn't require the spoken permissions, and so that has allowed us to prove that this is something that people want without needing to persuade sort of very very senior bordering

folks that they need to change their strategy. Yeah. I would imagine, particularly on the mobile front, when you crack that nut, that really is going to have a huge effect for you. Yeah, exactly. And you know, mobile is is a really interesting platform. It just so happens that the pandemic has made it slightly less relevant, and so we've been able to really sort of take that and run with the fact that many people have access to

a laptop conveniently right now. Um, but as people start to move around again and start to want to be in these social environments, we've got a ton of ideas about how to extend that to mobile and that may just be the that, you know, one example of that may just be that if you're on mobile, you have to manually synchronize your TV, but if you're on laptop just magically happens for you, and you're okay with that

because you know that that's an alternative use case. Obviously, we want to provide experiences that are really buttoned up, and that worked very well for users who were also exploring deeper integrations. Who is your audience there at, sen Or Joe. I'm curious just that I keep sort of referencing in this conversation, this hypothetical set of teenagers. For all, I know your average ages seventy years old. I have

who who out there is using this kind of technology. So, because we worked so fast to to reboot the product at the beginning of this this chapter of history, UM, we actually have not yet done very much by way of sort of using research, and we make it very lightweight to join these sessions, so we don't ask people how old they are and where they're from. UM, so I have an empirical sense of how this has shifted. We had a very very dialed in understanding of the

users prior to this search, but it's definitely broader. You know, you're the support emails and the praise that we get on social comes from people whom some people who are sort of clearly in their middle ages, you know, and they're just sort of thinking about this as a great way to connect with their friends that they miss. There's a lot of young folks because they tend to not

be worried. We call them screen ages. You know, they don't hold back in terms of what it takes to to get to their friends and to create experiences on devices. But yeah, it's it's very early, and the sense we're getting is it's much broader than it was before. Tell us a little bit about Senior as a company. How did you guys come together? How big are you? I I you mentioned you're in Seattle. I assume that's where

your whole team is. Yeah, we we we have five full timers in Seattle and a number of incredibly talented freelancers that work in other locations for us. Um we were born inside of Real Networks, So, you know, those like you with a deep knowledge of the industry will know that Real sort of invented streaming audio and video back in the nineties and is still based in Seattle. And Rob Glazer that the CEO of Real is our chairman and has personally been very bullish on the company.

So yeah, we're based up in Seattle. We're a small team, um, and we're very passionate about the space, but we have great support from from Robin. The folks are real to get things done and to to navigate this space. And I'm curious, are there investors that have joined Real Robbing

in investing in your company? Yeah, so we we we went through the Launch Accelerated program run by Jason Calacanis last year and Rob and Jason are the sort of two primary investors other than Real Networks when we were being incubated, and uh, you know, so far, it's it's it's been a really great team to have on board.

We're thinking about, you know, potentially raising another round in the next couple of months and and sort of really just trying to understand what the best timing would look like because we're trying to stay heads down on building products right now because as you can imagine, people, you know, that feeling you get when you have a product that that people actually want to get inundated with requests constantly. So we're trying to really stay heads down on that stuff.

But yeah, and finally, I wonder how Robert Jason look at your company's long term ability to monetize. You mentioned it's all about scaling up. Now, I get that, but have you given much thought to a time who knows how long it will be from now? Where how do

you make money? Yeah? We we We think Twitch is probably the best example of a you know, a social video platform that has monetized with an industry working with it, and that's the gaming industry, in the sports industry, and we we'd like to think of that as a similar sort of analogy. So, um, you know, proving that we build this incredible flywheel where people come into the products, they engage with content, and then they stick around to

hang out with their friends. One we've done that, it sort of rights itself in terms of working with the industry to promote their content and thinking about you know, where you direct consumers to tune into the hottest new content. Beyond that as well, there are other models around sort of tipping and the sort of social life chat experiences that exist, and we're just at the beginning of trying

to understand those. But we think that if you look at the amount of money being invested in great content right now, um, it's you know, it's billions and billions and billions of dollars and so having the ability to create new experiences and engagement around that content and to sort of reinvent some of the long tail content given that maybe some productions have slowed down during the pandemic. We're very polished on our ability to facilitate that. Well,

you made the Twitch comparison, so I'll bite. I mean, do you have Twitch sized the ambitions because I guess I'm not sure he's seen or something that is going to be remembered as a brand synonymous with a behavior or is it just sort of, uh, an infrastructure technology that maybe consumers don't even eventually need to know about my brand. If I didn't gravitate towards the former, I'd

be a bad entrepreneur. You know, I think we would love to be synonymous with enjoying content together and if we can do that, and if you know, our mission here is to bring people together around shows and movies that they love. It's that simple, and the sky is the limit in that respect. That being said, you know, would be very happy if we could facilitate that at scale for a bunch of other organizations, But our primary focuses on the consumer. Well, looking forward, to seeing how

continues to unfold for you. You're off to a great start. Thanks for talking with me, Joe, I really appreciate it. Andrew, thanks a lot. This has been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week for another helping of scintillating conversation with media movers and shakers, and please make sure you subscribe to the podcast to hear future episodes. Also leave a review in Apple podcast let us know how we're doing. M