In a world where content is king, Boxee has found a way to give entertainment producers the royal treatment. After a successful App challenge and calculated rollouts of its Mac, Windows and Linux releases, internet television platform Boxee is launching into private beta with a new and improved look. ReadWriteWeb got an early look at the product and found out how the company plans to increase its growing user base.
Says Boxee’s VP of marketing Andrew Kippen, “We’re trying to change how people view television. It the past it’s been something people have associated with unhealthiness. Instead of force feeding programs to passive audiences, users are exploring and interacting with web and TV content and each other.”
Kippen hopes that the company’s new design will be more conducive to dialogue and exploration. Rather than appearing like the mobile app interface of an iPhone, the new Boxee offers an experience much like that of social dashboard Seesmic. In addition to OAuth integration, users will notice the following changes.
New Homepage
With Boxee Beta, users are greeted by a dashboard with three columns in the form of a newsfeed, featured content and a program queue. The newsfeed offers starred content and comments from Boxee, Twitter and Facebook friends. The center column is reserved for featured community content. In the future this area will be monetized through a pay-to-promote program. And finally, the program queue lets you to keep track of your Netflix queue and latest Boxee-related TV subscriptions.
TV and Video
In the past users were asked to differentiate between their local and web files. Boxee Beta mixes local and web content in recognition that users simply want to watch their favorite programs regardless of the formats or location of files. Instead of filtering by types of file or having to open an application, Boxee Beta has a new integrated search feature and allows us to pull up files by genre and price, rather than having to switch between file types. The company also organizes your favorite TV shows by episode and season.
Some New Applications
Social
: While both
and Hulu’s
Watch Now Facebook application
allow users to chat alongside their favorite entertainment programs, nothing beats the resolution of your home entertainment system. The
application lets viewers interact with others while watching content on Boxee. Some examples of activity include trivia games and chat.
Super Fandom: If you’ve ever wanted to have yourself a Kurt Russell movie marathon, then the Clicker Boxee application is your answer. ReadWriteWeb recently covered the web version of Clicker as a TV guide for web video and the Boxee application allows users to pull in all the relevant metadata on shows, channels and even actors.
Niche Content: Boxee Beta’s latest content partners include The Escapist gaming network with episodes like the ever-popular Zero Punctuation video game reviews as well as the Suicide Girls’ community programming. By changing Boxee’s default settings to allow for adult content, users will discover that a number of additional adult applications exist.
