TiVo Fans Host TV Tasting Parties Across the Country to Share What Makes TiVo So Special

Posted on Thursday, September 28, 2006 by MegaZone

After years of bringing people together in living rooms across America for Super Bowl parties, Oscar parties, and countless viewing parties of every kind, TiVo is offering its fans the first opportunity to share their passion for the invention they credit with changing their lives with their wider circles of friends and family at official TiVo Tasting Parties. At these parties, which will be held in cities across the nation on Saturday September 30,th TiVo subscribers will offer a Taste of TiVo — fun-filled parties for their friends who have heard of the TiVo service but never experienced it for themselves. To date, more than a thousand TiVo subscribers have signed up to play party hosts.

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MegaZone is the Editor of Gizmo Lovers and the chief contributor. He's been online since 1989 and active in several generations of 'social media' - mailing lists, USENet groups, web forums, and since 2003, blogging.    MegaZone has a presence on several social platforms: Google+ / Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / LiveJournal / Web.    You can also follow Gizmo Lovers on other sites: Blog / Google+ / Facebook / Twitter.
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  • trinsf

    Are you hosting a party, Zone? I had planned to, but I have a conflicting even I’m hosting, and I can’t manage the timing they want.

  • megazone

    Nope, I didn’t sign up. I felt the info provide was too vague and didn’t want to sign up without knowing more. And, frankly, I just don’t see how it is going to work. I fail to understand the concept they’re going for.

  • trinsf

    Well, the actual downloaded content makes it clearer what they want. The idea is to invite friends who don’t have Tivo, and use the content to show off to them what it does. There’s special content only available for this, and some promo bits that walk those unfamilar with Tivo through what it does, with a kind of interactivity. “Hey, try pressing the pause button right now, so you can pass the chips. We’ll be waiting for you!”

    I already do that informally with friends who don’t have Tivo, and I could see combining some of the content with a show viewing party (like watching the new Lost episode or something) for a sort of Tivo party. The problem I have is that it wasn’t clear during signup that they wanted the parties hosted on a particular day, at a particular time range. After I signed up, I got that info — that it *had* to be Saturday afternoon/evening — and since I already am hosting a vintage ball then, I couldn’t do the Tivo thing.

    It also appeared that part of this was meant to be a proof-of-concept launch for the houseparty website; I have already gotten spam from the site asking me to host a party for a magazine I’ve never heard of. It’s theoretically a fundraising party, where guests are supposed to pay a fee to attend, and get a magazine subscription and some goodies, while the company will make a donation to the charity.

    Now, the Tivo party also offers a discounted Tivo subscription/box deal for the attendees, but I expect that link will be circulated the way other promos usually are. But really, the biggest downside of all of this is that I don’t *have* that many friends who don’t already have Tivo. The ones that don’t either know all about it but don’t want it, or flat out don’t do any TV watching and don’t want to. Here at the northern tip of Silicon Valley, the parties are a hard sell.

  • megazone

    Yeah – most of my friends already *have* TiVo. Or I’ve already pitched it to them enough that if they don’t have it already, a party isn’t going to sway them. :-) All of the people I can think of off had that I’d invite have TiVo to my knowledge – or don’t even own a TV and have no interest in it. (I have some friends who just don’t watch TV, just downloads or DVDs – and those via their Macs.)

  • gibbie69

    It sounds like a Tupperware party. Maybe the next step will be to have a stash of TiVos in the spare room that you can sell to people. If you get enough sold you can get a lovely hostess gift :)