TOK Baseball App Brings Voice to the Second Screen
Second-screen apps are all the rage among sports-minded entrepreneurs these days, but the startup TOK.tv thinks it’s set itself apart with an offering that focuses on voice, not text.
Its first product, TOK Baseball for iPad, just went live in the App Store. TOK Football is set for release after the World Series concludes, and other sports will follow before the company looks to expand to other markets.
Here’s how TOK Baseball [App Store link] works — or rather, how it doesn’t: unlike most second-screen apps for sports, you don’t simply get live updates while exchanging text-based messages with friends or consuming tweeted commentary from the world at large. Instead, TOK Baseball uses second-screen technology for what’s in some ways a more traditional experience.
After downloading the free app, you can invite up to three friends to join you in TOK Baseball for a specific game. Once that happens, your iPad will display live-updating stats for whichever game you watch, while enabling you to talk to one another in actual verbal conversation. All current games are displayed on a map (see photo above), so you can all switch over to receive updates and shoot the breeze over a different game, or one person can move back and forth between multiple hangout sessions. A set of built-in sound effects let you augment your trash talk or celebrations.
TOK.tv founder Fabrizio Capobianco believes his app solves two key deficiencies for sports fans at home: TV doesn’t provide a constant stream of statistical updates, while texting with different groups of friends who can’t make it to your couch in person lacks the immediacy and excitement of actual conversation.
“The idea came from the fact that I watch a lot of baseball alone at home with my dog,” Capobianco says. “It always felt a bit pathetic to be watching baseball alone and screaming ‘homerun!’ by myself while the dog looks at me with a strange face. And I want to scream, ‘homerun!’ and not have to take the time to type it out.”
Capobianco is right that a simple, voiced-based approach gives TOK Baseball — and his company’s future offerings — an interesting counterpoint to the second-screen apps fans are used to being pitched.
Do you think TOK.tv can catch on with sports fans? Give us your take in the comments, and for a video walk-through check out the clip below.
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