SetJam Takes Online TV One-Step Closer to Simplicity of Traditional TV
New York NY (PRWEB) -- During an already frenetic week of activity in the New TV industry, during which major conferences are being held on both coasts, New York based SetJam today announced that it will be publicly releasing its entrant into the hyper-competitive online TV guide market at the Web 2.0 Expo taking place at the Jacob Javits convention center in New York City on Wednesday. Responding to the ever growing number of legally available TV shows and movies scattered across the web, and the increasing demand of millions of people to watch whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it, SetJam has built an easy to use, specialized search engine that for the first time makes, what is collectively the largest library of full-length TV shows and movies in the world, as easy to watch as traditional TV.
According to CEO, Ryan Janssen, SetJam plans to compete in such a crowded market, "By doing less, better. A lot of our competitors are trying to position themselves as giant media portals, where they hope to have anything and everything video available in one place. That's not what our customers tell us they want. In today's seamless web, people want a simple tool to take them quickly and efficiently to the premium content they actually care about. That's exactly the tool we've built at SetJam."
The homepage of the site presents users with a simple search box. After typing in the name of the show, they're taken immediately to a page that lists every episode from first to last with links to view each episode laid out in a grid based on the business model of the destination site (free, pay-per-view, or as part of an existing subscription, like Netflix). Unlike other providers, SetJam doesn't frame the content on their own site, but rather directs users to the content provider's site where the show starts to play immediately.
Besides a simple save button next to the search results that enables users to quickly build a queue of their favorite shows, there is no indication that SetJam wants users to stay on their site at all. Janssen defends this approach by saying, "Our competition is relying on advertising to support their sites, so they have to find a way to capture you. Today's user is just too smart for that. We've built our business around the affiliate model. Like Google, we get paid to take you where you want to go faster."
To back it's claims about what consumers want, SetJam cites TDG's latest digital media analysis, "Broadband-Enabled TV: Rise of the OTT Provider" that says that 85% of consumers simply value being able to quickly find and watch episodes of current TV shows they may have missed or want to watch again. Their team has taken the opposite approach of some other search companies by intentionally filtering out all short-form, user generated content from their index--they just have full-length TV shows and Movies. Janssen also said that internally, his team has focused on what they call the "Time-to-Watch" metric--the length of time from turning on your TV to watching your show--and claims SetJam is nearly twice as efficient as his closest competitor.
Only time will tell whether this simplified approach is really what users want, but Janssen says he's excited to be opening up his service to the world, "You can only tell so much in a private beta. Our goal from day one has been to a make watching online TV as easy as traditional TV--on Wednesday we'll finally get see how close we've come!"
Those interested in learning more about SetJam can visit: http://www.setjam.com
About SetJam
SetJam was founded in June of 2009 by Ryan Janssen, the former Chief Operating Officer of online financial tool builder Angelsoft.net. From day-one, SetJam's mission has been to make online TV as simple as traditional TV. SetJam is headquartered in New York City's Silicon Alley with development offices in Warsaw, Poland. For more information please email press (at) setjam.com.
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