Big Brother is…LISTENING!

“…It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” — 1984, George Orwell

Has IntoNow  simply married Shazam with TV to allow you to FourSquare your television viewing, or is this a sinister first step towards  Orwell’s  “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”  vision of the future? The technology of this free iPhone app, from a Palo Alto company of the same name led by Google and MTV veteran Adam Cahan, is as simple as it is engaging: When watching TV, click on the app, and it recognizes what you are watching and posts it to your Facebook and Twitter feeds (click link for video demo). Others watching the same show feel a communal bond with you, and can begin sharing. Since the user controls what to tag, the implications of snooping are minimized…provided the user remembers to turn it off and the company discloses and adheres to a privacy policy!

With the technology up and running with more than 600,000 downloads, the company must now turn its attention on refining and monetizing its value proposition.  First, the company teamed up with MTV so that viewers can “prove” that they watched Jersey Shore in order to win a large prize. More interestingly, the company today announced a deal with Pepsi to tag COMMERCIALS,  after noticing that roughly 7% of the program matter people tagged were ads. According to ClickZ , “Pepsi will be able to track the IntoNow coupons through the serial number on each phone, providing the company with data on who actually ends up sampling the product as a result of seeing the commercial. Sending coupons directly to phones also allows Pepsi to offer free sodas rather than a more typical two-for-one deal, because it can be sure that no single phone is getting more than one coupon.” In short, the old Nielsen set-top box just became a far better APP!

What does this “Shazam on steroids” technology mean for the future of healthcare marketing?  Quite conceivably, a future where coupon downloads are tied to every pharamaceutical ad…and your physician is able to track your compliance not by what you enter into a record, but what your phone records you hearing/doing or not hearing/doing (such as a daily record of the silence of your sleep/snoring sent to the doctor treating you for insomnia).  Rather than telling you to “see our ad in Good Housekeeping”, might the FDA someday allow “tag this ad NOW on InfoNow for important safety information sent immediately to your phone”?

Beyond the individual, the social implications are equally interesting: Are the viewers of some specific programs more or less valuable to healthcare advertisers because they are more or less active than others (think Alli or Chantix)?   Are IntoNow viewing records admissable in a criminal trial? If you forget to turn it off, can the fact that you watched a lot of Spice Channel last month become fodder for hackers…or be used by a potential employer?

And, perhaps most importantly of all, do you really WANT to meet up with people in your part of the airport who liked that episode of “Jersey Shore” enough to tag it?