Intrigued by its cool sounding name, I wanted to find out more about Fanhattan. I then came across this demo by one of the founders of the service, which has been going for about a year now. In this demo, Gilles BianRosa (CEO) made it clear that Fanhattan is all about content and not about the individual apps that host films or TV shows.
As BianRosa explained, for the Fanhattan user it’s most and foremost about “what do I want to watch?” This means that as a user I will look for the content first and Fanhattan will subsequently present me with a range of services where I can access this content (think Netflix, iTunes and Amazon).
These are the main things that I learned about Fanhattan:
- It acts as a ‘content gateway’ – Rather than having to go into a specific app or service, Fanhattan enables you to look for the content you want to watch, after which it will let you know through which services you can access this content. The app is built in HTML5 which means it will fully support rich media like audio and video.
- It offers content in the broadest sense of the word – It’s a shame Fanhattan isn’t available in the UK yet, because I would love to have a closer look at all the features Fanhattan displays around a specific piece of content. Call me a geek but I would be very interested in seeing up close how Fanhattan display products or data related to “The Godfather” such as merchandising, the movie soundtrack, PG ratings, similar films recommendations and film info.
- It has a clear social element – As we know, digital content lends itself incredibly well to sharing with your friends and to friend recommendations. Fanhattan taps into this social discovery element by enabling its users to build a Taste Profile with the content they have watched, which they can easily share with friends. Similarly, if you like a film or TV show on Fanhattan this will automatically appear on your Facebook wall.
- It’s cross-platform – Being available on a number of platforms sounds like a no-brainer but Fanhattan has been following a (in my mind sensible) phased approach to rolling out on different platforms, with the iPhone being the latest addition. I understand that TV and game consoles are next on Fanhattan’s product roadmap.
- It’s cloud based – Because the content discovery element of Fanhattan is happening in the cloud, it should increase Fanhattan’s flexibility in displaying and storing (discovery) data and content.
- It has a flexible model – Users can either subscribe to Fanhattan (like you do for services like Spotify or Rdio) or pay Fanhattan for each transaction separately. It’s a shame no figures are publicly available on the uptake of Fanhattan as a subscription service vs. users paying for content on an ad-hoc basis.
Related links for further learning:
http://blog.fanhattan.com/2011/09/13/social-discovery-and-the-power-of-vudu/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/16/fanhattan-tv-discovery-app-migrates-to-the-iphone/
http://gigaom.com/video/fanhattan-takes-content-discovery-to-the-cloud/
As I learn ... 
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