Amidst all the CES shenanigans, the WSJ posted a piece about apps and TV, and whether consumers really want apps on their televisions. For me, the piece was thought provoking, specifically I’ve never realized how the compartmentalization of content could run counter to typical user behavior. That being said, TV apps are obviously here to stay, for the immediate future anyway, and I think that’s a good thing. Whether they’re a hit or a miss is yet to be seen, but we tend to think adding content to the tube is a good thing, even if the first draft isn’t completely what people want.

We’d love to hear comments on this idea, sound off below.

Cable subscribers jumped ship to the tune of 500,000+ last quarter, according to GigaOm, and for the first time in a while, GigaOm says other subscription “cable-like” services, such as satellite or IPTV services, didn’t make up the gap. That means a real percentage of Americans were cutting the cord, permanently.

Of course, given that we’re a video platform which supports delivering to a variety of devices, none of which are cable TV endpoints, the news strikes us exciting. It’s great for us as TV continues to diversify and evolve toward its eventual endpoint with the internet, but we’re not taking a victory lap just yet.

To be sure, we’re going through a pretty tragic time for many— 9.6% unemployment in October, with new statistics scheduled to hit tomorrow. We’re going to say that the 500k people cutting the cord aren’t all doing so because they’ve fallen in love with the Roku yet, but instead they’re looking to skimp on non-essential lifestyle expenditures where possible.

Despite the rough economic outlook, we think some people are getting more accustomed to the idea of constantly available entertainment, not dictated by outdated schedules nor other archaic paradigms. And, luckily for the TV industry, the economic model isn’t completely disintegrating as it did for the record industry thanks to Napster. No, almost quite the contrary. With ventures like ESPN3, TV Everywhere and of course, our clients, traditional radio and TV stations haven’t hid their heads in the sand, but instead have seemingly embraced technology.

That doesn’t mean there still won’t be dramatic shifts, but the shifts are likely to be styled differently. For instance, rather than the distribution mechanic drastically altering the consumption of the medium (Napster), I’m expecting broadcast media to be drastically altered due to the decrease in the cost of content production. A quick look around Vimeo shows that amateur cinematographers could credit card their way into professional-grade DSLR cinematography. In the future, live video production, such as we’re used to with news and sports programming, is not going to be exempt from similar market forces. We could see a massively level playing field where anyone with the right ideas, and the right amount of people, could put on a production that’s as good as anything else we’re seeing on cable.

By then, with more people wanting to distribute more content broadly, folks who’ve already started gathering their audiences will be in a better situation to profit from the impending doom of the cable cord.

We are HUGE fans of bringing video to the living room using IP. We talk to existing and potential clients about this each and every day. We have dozens of devices, from the original Apple TVs to new ones, from old Roku’s to the newest ones (which are pretty awesome), Boxee, and most recently, the Google TV. An amazing assortment of devices, each with its strengths and weaknesses.

In experiencing the different plays on “interactive television,” the one thing that I am certain of is that bringing social streams (twitter, flickr, facebook) onto the big screen – especially while watching video with others – is broken. It’s out of place. It distracts from the social experience of television.

As my wife and I watch some of our favorite shows, we each have some sort of computing device open. Perhaps we each have our own laptop open. Or iPad. Or mobile phones [Yeah, our house is sort of crazy like that]. Regardless, each of us is able to interact with a variety of services while we watch the “big screen” together. This is key – my wife would get very frustrated watching my twitter or facebook stream on screen. She would go insane trying to follow my ADHD brain as I bounce through IMDB and Wikipedia trying to track each actor.

If interactive television, however, is to connect my personal device, be it an iPhone, iPad, Android or laptop, together with the programming on screen, than we have a HUGE WINNER. I can follow my own whims while my wife can have her own interactions. However, the social aspect of us watching Glee together remains. We can both sing along. We can laugh. We can pause the video and comment. It is an experience that has been with us for our entire life and is comforting.

A couple of Castfire clients are about to launch products that will incorporate behind the scenes footage and additional video on iPads, iPhones and Android at the same time as it is airing on broadcast. The audience can be fully immersed with not only the broadcast, but can explore additional streams in conjunction. An amazing first step.

The future however, will utilize IP delivery and the processing power of the set top device (or directly in the television) to enable audience members to move content from the “big screen” to their personal device. It will keep “companion” apps in sync with the big screen, pushing relevant information to those who display interest. Want to learn more about that Lexus advertisement? How about being able to open a driving simulator on your own device. Want to purchase that same shirt that the star is wearing? What if the Gap store opened in conjunction on your laptop? Want to find out Tim Lincecum’s stats for pitching to left handed batters? Want to know how your fantasy football league is doing in real time? And on and on and on…

In the near future, the majority of people will carry a touch device with an internet connection. These devices should be leveraged to provide the interactive in interactive television. These devices should be the connection between both the content creators and the advertisers with the audience. These devices will allow us to enjoy the television experience together while connecting to our different circles online.

Television is social; social media is personal. Don’t confuse the two.

While perusing online video industry rag NewTeeVee, I stumbled across a report that DVR usage eats away at TV ratings by 15%-20%. I know in my household, it’s more like 95% of our household ratings. With that growth in DVRs comes a shift in the way people consume content, and specifically they’ve altered the mainstream media diet of consumers dramatically. Now, some viewers don’t look at the TV as a place to see what’s on, but rather what’s good to watch.

It’s easy to take this new behavior pattern and infer that the day of on-demand is just around the corner. I think a lot of smart folks will take that approach, and there’s some sound logic behind it. Now that consumers are willing to “bookmark” shows and watch them on their schedules, that has to mean internet-enabled TVs will lead a monumental shift away from primetime, right?

It could be the case, but rather than walk down the road that’s likely to get overcrowded and overhyped in the next six months, let me recommend starting with the road less traveled. Think about why people like TV.

Why do I like TV? Curated content, brainless interface. When I show up to my TV, I don’t actively need to search for a topic, find an actor, look by keyword, but instead I can simply show up expecting to be entertained… and guess what? I’m entertained. I simply swap between 3-4 cable networks and I can (usually) find something that catches my fancy. That’s the way it’s been for 50 years. People expect TV to entertain them without asking much from the user.

There are some smart folks taking a look at the passive entertainment experience online. For instance, take a peek at Google Reader Play. It’s a product that takes a bunch of sites online, and tries to serve you up content based on the ones you’re most likely to enjoy. Another fav worth checking out is Upl8.tv. When you show up to the site, it’s simply an old-skool rendered TV with a YouTube embedded player. Rather than leaning into the product, and selecting some category, or searching, instead the site throws a selection of hand curated YouTube videos at you, one after another. The beauty is in the simplicity: Just smash the spacebar when you get bored.

Those are two good examples where someone has ventured outside the lines, but I think content producers can take some adventurous risks without spending a ton of cash. Find a smart web developer, come up with some ways of presenting content that doesn’t look like YouTube, create it in some spare time, and find some users who will give you a shot. Worst case scenario? They don’t like it and you learned something about what people don’t like.

The reward is figuring out a non-traditional experience that users will love, and then being able to share your content in a way that connects with people. It’s not going to be easy, but the only downside is time. Try to carve some out to create a future, and your future self will thank you.

Over the past 5 1/2 years of business, we have a fallen into a variety of processes and systems. Some are convoluted, some are purely convenience. In almost every case, they were implemented in the heat of the moment and rarely received refinement. We often had huge dreams of building an entire platform for not only managing audio and video publishing, but also providing all of the tools we need to run and build Castfire. In reality, we have found this is a very poor use of our engineering focus.

In the last 6 weeks, we have started putting process in place and locking in our use of 3rd party services. Our engineering time is extremely valuable, so maximizing our time working on core functionality is key. On that note, here are some of the key companies that we rely on as we scale sales and account management while keeping our engineers focused on our publishing platform.

Highrise
We had been using Salesforce for almost two years but found that it was overwhelming for our small sales staff. Unfortunately, during setup, we tried to populate it with all of our contacts throughout the years. The result was a database filled with inactive records and poorly categorized. While Salesforce is a very strong SaaS platform, we needed something simpler.

Enter Highrise from 37Signals, which is a very simple CRM for small businesses. The cost savings was not only substantial, but it also allowed for everyone in the company to have access to the data. We have now begun consolidating all of user management, pipeline, and marketing efforts within Highrise. Our goal by the end of the year is to use Highrise to do monthly reviews of not only our pipeline, but also existing accounts. It will aggregate everything from marketing emails, billing, support and more into a single place. Even early into this process, it has increased our productivity and our internal conversations about Castfire.

Zendesk
We have been a Zendesk customer since July, 2008. They have provided a wonderful support system that has grown dramatically over the years. The email workflow for support tickets has been essential for us. With the addition of Randall Bennett, we have begun taking advantage of the knowledge base and forum functionality as well. We are looking forward to utilizing the integration with GoodData to provide reporting on our response times and the types of tickets.

In our goal to consolidate around Highrise, this October, we will be utilizing their webhooks implementation to add tickets to Highrise automatically. Unfortunately, it is not a simple process to integrate immediately, however, it should only take a couple of hours with some creativity.

Freshbooks
Prior to March, 2009, our billing process was a partially automated, fully pain in the ass system. While there is a separate datawarehouse for every client on Castfire, representing all usage of our platform, the actual process of getting invoices out was slow and painful. It involved quite a bit of back and forth over emailed spreadsheets and often incurred delays.

We implemented the Freshbooks API in less than a week, fully automating the monthly process of creating invoices. While we still incur delays on certain months as we QA all of the billing, we have found that Freshbooks is rock solid and is a fabulous invoicing system. It is such a valuable tool for Castfire it is painful to think of the days we did not use Freshbooks.

In October, we will also be integrating our Freshbooks solution with Highrise. While there is not an existing solution, webhooks again to the rescue. This is a huge step in being able to review account status from a single application.

The most difficult aspect of our billing process has been the refinement of our pricing model. While the iteration process has led us to a greatly simplified model that is resonating with customers, it is a nightmare to keep up with the variety of historical models. We are beginning to consolidate all customers to a single model, but it has been a struggle. Simplifying our pricing model not only makes it easier for our customers, it makes it much easier for our operations staff to accurately bill each month.

MailChimp
There are a ton of email marketing companies on the market. As we have been heavy on video and engineering expertise, and admittedly light on marketing expertise, we looked for a solution that was easy, offered tons of functionality and, most importantly, would walk us through the process of managing our newsletter. Mailchimp has provided us all of the functionality in a simple to use interface with fantastic pricing.

As a bonus, their integration with Highrise is great. We are able to gather all of the stats from our email marketing directly into our CRM to provide a single dashboard to review our current and pipeline customers. All of the functionality was enabled in about 10 mouse clicks. Amazing.

Google Apps
This is the basis of it all for the Castfire team. Google has rolled out an amazing suite of tools for our team. I am not sure where we would be if we had to put together Mail, Calendar, IM, Office apps and simple wikis on our own. I can promise you that it would not be as reliable, would not be as complete and would not allow our engineers to focus on our core business. This has been a major win for Castfire.

The ability for web applications to interact through APIs and Webhooks makes life so much easier for start ups. We picked best of breed solutions and connected them, utilizing very little of our engineering time. We are thrilled with what we have put together in the past 6 weeks and look forward to refining this the remainder of the year. Thanks to all of the companies and open technologies that have made this possible.