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Watching TV is an activity enjoyed by millions of people every day. On average, adult Americans spend five hours and four minutes of their daily lives watching their favorite channel, for example. If one were to extrapolate that figure, and assuming a 65-year lifespan, we could infer than that average person would spend a whooping nine years of his or her lifetime mesmerized by the TV screen.

Then again, with so much TV programming on offer, how can one resist the audiovisual onslaught and the temptation to just let the screen do the talking for a while?

Problem with terrestrial TV is, you can’t choose what to view. You can choose the channel, but not the content, so you’re stuck with CNN, Judge Judy, or any other TV staple.

TV-TWO is a brand new ICO hailing from Germany, offering the community to experience content they want to watch and earn tokens in the process, using blockchain technology to power the platform.

This piece is an analysis of the facts available about the TV-TWO ICO. It should not be read as offering advice or a recommendation. While ICOs have quickly become a popular tool for funding projects and start-ups, they can also be very high-risk for token purchasers.

Additionally, ICOs currently have an unclear legal and financial status. Token buyers may find that their purchase does not offer them any security or equity because the ICO is closer to a crowdfunding initiative than a traditional IPO. As such, any investor who plans to buy tokens during any ICO needs to obtain all relevant independent advice and carry out their own appropriate due diligence.

TV-TWO: TV you want to watch

TV-TWO intends to use the Ethereum blockchain as the underlying technology through which users can view ‘traditional’ television, along with premium content with no subscription costs. Community members can view this streaming content and earn tokens by choosing to see sponsored messages from advertisers.

The company defines its offering as a ‘blockchain-based Open Platform that helps to decentralize the TV ecosystem in order to spread the oligopolistic surplus of TV networks among Consumers, Content Creators, and Advertisers.’

TV-TWO in numbers & quick facts

Token Name – Token for Television (TTV)

Token Value – To be defined during ICO

ICO Start Date – February 24, 2018

ICO End Date – March 24, 2018

The TTV token

As with any other ICO, the company will issue its own currency, the Token-for-Television (TTV). This token is based on the ERC-20 standard.

Once created, the tokens will be allocated as follows:

Once created, the tokens will be allocated as follows:

Crowdsale – 67%

Supporters – 5%

Campaigns – 3%

Team – 15%

There will be no more tokens created after the end of the ICO.

The team

TV-TWO’s website presents a core team of eight people, plus nine advisors.

The team includes a lot of previous expertise in the software industry but not a lot in the media/TV world, so it remains to be seen how an ICO dedicated to distribute TV content can thrive when this basic requirement appears to be lacking.

Nevertheless, the advisory board does offer a lot of expertise in previous ICOs, so there might be a bit of tradeoff there.

David Ben Kay just joined us as an advisor! David has been a member of the Governing Board of #Ethereum and General Counsel to Microsoft in China. He is a strong believer in our project and very excited about how we will decentralize the TV industry: https://t.co/LxtF7zH5qh pic.twitter.com/ZZAgFy7JXa — TV-TWO (@tvtwocom) December 20, 2017

Social Media presence and digital footprint

A strong presence on Social Media is usually a good indicator of a company’s popularity, though it is not the only factor that determines success.

Here’s the numbers for TV-TWO at the time of writing (December 2017).

Twitter – 52 followers

Facebook – 20 followers

Telegram – 129 followers

Medium – 10 followers

YouTube – 0 followers

LinkedIn – 14 followers

This ICO’s presence on social media is rather poor at present time. This is in no way a sign of failure, but TV-TWO does have a lot of work to do in terms of reaching out to the wider community.

An ICO that deals in audiovisual media should certainly nurture YouTube and Instagram channels at the very least. Facebook is also a great way to reach out and expand the company’s presence out there.

Overall, a poor rating for TV-TWO in the Social Media front.

Competition

TV-TWO is a pretty unique offering unto itself. There isn’t much competition out there at the moment, or any other ICO that offers a similar service. SingularDTV, perhaps, but this is geared more towards distributing studio content.

So TV-TWO find itself in a leading position in the market, as it potentially stands as the only ICO that offers the integration of traditional television with streaming, premium content.

It remains to be seen whether TV-TWO uses this leading position to its advantage.

Website quality & layout

An ICO’s website is the first port of call for any potential investors, and if the site isn’t appealing enough, they will move on and forget about your proposition, no matter how good or viable it may be. It is therefore imperative to design a good website, to make a strong and lasting first impression.

TV-TWO’s website is secure, and very elegantly done. A YouTube video providing an overview of the ICO features prominently, which is a neat future as you can get a fast, at-a-glance idea of what’s on offer.

The site uses a visually pleasing color palette, and it’s easy to navigate. The only discordance I found is the font size of the headings across the top. The font size is significantly smaller to the rest of the page, which jars slightly. Apart from this small detail, there is little to fault on the site.

Overall, TV-TWO’s site is worthy.

Whitepaper

A well laid out, informative, comprehensive Whitepaper is a must for any ICO, if they are to be taken seriously. Documentation is sometimes treated as an afterthought, leaving many companies open to some criticism.

TV-TWO’s Whitepaper can be described as ‘functional’, straight to the point even. It is not particularly appealing, graphically speaking, but it does contain all the relevant information, and more. This paper, like many others, falls into the ‘too techie’ category. Datasheets, schematics, etc., would be better placed in a separate tech factsheet.

Check out our whitepaper to learn more about how we can build a decentralized television ecosystem together: https://t.co/Hne69o0iVh #Ethereum pic.twitter.com/P6781puUDE — TV-TWO (@tvtwocom) December 1, 2017

Other than that, and the fact that the document does not include any headers, company logo, or graphical niceties, TV-TWO’s Whitepaper is ‘Acceptable.’

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, TV-TWO’s offering is rather unique, which puts this ICO in a good position as there is little competition.

The idea of integrating traditional television with premium streaming content at no cost is certainly appealing, but it will of course come down to the quality of that content.

Only time will tell if people buy into the concept and support the crowdsale. The power of television is mighty, we’ll see if the combined power of television and blockchain is even mightier.