Today, we are proud to announce that we are opening Redux up to the public. We’ve been excited by the fantastic growth and reactions from the community we’ve been seeing, and decided it’s time to open the doors!
As we launch, we decided to step back and lay out what we want to build with our community. Below is an “Entertainment Manifesto” of our core beliefs, and we look forward to engaging with our community on this manifesto, and together, continuing to achieve these principles in the coming years.
1. Entertainment is moving online
More and more people are turning to the Internet for entertainment. Full-length legal episodes of TVshows are online, as well as millions of independent video producers. Even when Americans are watching TV, they’re surfing the web at the same time. A recent study confirmed that over 57% of TV viewers with Internet access used both TV & the Internet at the same time at least once a month. This opens up huge opportunities in the online media world for innovation and improvement in how people can find, consume, and interact with that media. At Redux, our goal is to “friend-source” the online entertainment process and give people an easy and engaging way to find the best media and links on the web, recommended by their friends and people who share their interests.
2. Cable has a few hundred videos playing at one time. The Internet has millions.
Cable Internet makes a few hundred channels available to you. On the Internet, there are millions of videos that exist. Over 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. We can’t simply channel surf anymore to discover content anymore — we would spend more time browsing for content than watching it. We need to watch the 1 hour of content we love, not the 1,200 hours of uninteresting crap. With Redux.com, we are helping sift through the boring and only deliver the good stuff.
3. We use Friend-Sourcing in real life – why not online?
Friends are far better at knowing what we’d like to watch than any program or television exec. When I know what I’m looking for, search is great (eg. If I want to watch a hockey game, I can go to any number of sites and find it streaming online). But when I don’t know what I’m looking for (eg. I just want to watch hockey, but don’t have a game in mind), it’s much better to hear from friends and people that share my interest. A cable programmer 300 miles away doesn’t know your interests nearly as well as your friends. That’s why we’ve friend-sourced your entertainment on Redux. We want to put your friends and people that share you interest in control of your TV.
4. Entertainment is meant to be socialized
Content is made to be talked about. Watching a man dance around the world is fun, but it’s equally fun to talk about it around the watercooler. Perhaps someone saw another similar video, or someone shared that same experience. A few years ago when we could only watch TV, we had to talk about it in other places — over the watercooler, or perhaps in a forum. But now, socialization of content can happen at the same time as content is being watched. With Redux, you can comment, give props, or even create a media-based conversation where a friend shares a link and you share a video in response, which your friend can then play right in that conversation.
5. Online Entertainment is being consumed differently than it is on TV
The majority of American households use their TV at least once a month, and for many households, the TV is almost always on. But most Americans don’t watch TV when they’re away from home or at work. A growing number of online visitors, however, are starting to “snack” on video entertainment while at work. Maybe they’re taking a lunch or coffee break, or perhaps they’re sneaking in a short entertainment snack while they’re catching up on a few emails. Unlike a TV episodes, which takes at least 30 minutes to watch(with commercials), short form content can be consumed in a couple minutes, and is perfectly suited for online users taking short breaks. No long are we waiting until we get home to watch video — we’re watching in short spurts throughout the day. Of course, the average Redux viewer spends more than an hour tuned into our service, so maybe we’re reducing productivity well beyond our expectations.
6. Online Entertainment will start appearing on TVs
Though many online visitors are consuming online entertainment at work on the go, a growing number of households are connecting their computer or internet-enabled set-top boxes to their TV. As many as 10M American households have connected their computer to their TV at one point. And unlike when we’re at work, when we’re watching entertainment on the living room TV, we’re not looking to just snack. We need to be able to sit back in the arm chair, and passively watching entertainment as we relax from a hard day, or work on something in the background. On your TV set, it’s impossible to sift through all of the content online to find one 10 second video you’ll enjoy, but if you tune into your friend-sourced Redux TV mode, you’re set to just sit back and watch as nature intended.
At Redux our vision is that when we turn on our desktop computer, mobile phone, or TV entertainment is delivered to us through the recommendations of friends and people that share our interest.
Our launch is an important step in our journey to achieve that vision, and we look forward to working with our community to get there. Thank you for all of your support you have already given to help us create and enjoy the great product we see today.