Here are a few notes on what I learned from last night's second experiment with screen2.io. 

We watched an episode of Frontline together at pre-set time, 10PM Eastern. About 20 people showed up, and there were about ten people two hours later when the show ended. I don't know if they were all the same people, but some did stay for the whole thing.

While it was nice that PBS provided the embeddable stream, after about 15 minutes, the stream shut down and my browser was redirected to their site, where it picked up with the video at the place where it left off. This was too jarring. I was totally into the reality of the show by that time, and the people I was watching with. Suspension of disbelief is a very real thing, and they screwed it up for us. Why? I welcome comments from people at PBS if they are listening, and would like to provide feedback -- don't do this. 

It was noted that they had a version of the video on YouTube, so in the future when there's a Frontline episode we want to do this with, we'll use the YouTube version.

Here's a screen shot of the screen2.io app this morning, after the party.

It works better with live events that start at a well-known pre-set time. The debate was perfect. The next debate is for the VPs, next Tuesday, Oct 4, and we'll try it again for that one. And the second presidential debate on the following Sunday, Oct 9.

I wish the NBA or MLB would try this, I'd love to see what we can do with the live broadcast of a sporting event.

Thanks to the steady contributors. The people are the thing. We have a critical mass. I really enjoyed having them there while I was watching. This is a classic bootstrap. Without interested people nothing happens. 

We now have the ability to easily selectively send cross-posts to Twitter, and it worked perfectly, exactly the way I hoped it would. I don't think the Twitter followers were confused. I got some replies and RTs over there, even though I was primarily talking to the people on screen2.io. 

PS: After I wrote the title for this piece, I had to go register watchparty.io. Too good to pass up. I think online watch parties are going to be a big thing.