The social life: Catch-up TV in 3 minutes

There are so many shows for us to keep up with.

FOMO is big business in TV. That, for the uninitiated, is fear of missing out. You know those FOMO moments. You see #OITNB and don't have a clue what it means (that's Orange Is The New Black, by the way. Already on series 2, what do you mean you haven't seen it yet?). Few are immune from those unfortunate moments when a TV show has completely passed you by and trying to join in a conversation at work, on Twitter or even among your closest friends, proves impossible.

Step forward Skimo, which aims to save you from such hardcore social embarrassment. It calls itself "The Video Summarisation Engine" and breaks down a show into two or three minutes for quick, easy, painless consumption. Want to pretend you've been keeping up with The Bridge when you've really spent all evening Keeping Up With The Kardashians? Consider it done in a crunch.

Is Skimo the perfect solution for time-poor viewers or a nightmare that spells doom for all those pieces of perfectly crafted long-form TV? Ten years ago we had watercooler telly, but now there's such a buzz around new shows that viewers are suffering from full-blown FOMO if they don't start watching by the time everyone else does.

Skimo founder Vasu Srinivasan argues that viewing habits have become so voracious that even if a show finds its way on to YouTube, attention spans are so short that the majority goes to waste. "People do not watch the whole video - they skim it," he says. "Skimo can automatically generate two to three minutes of highlights from any video in any language."

It's a handy tool that allows TV bluffing at its most efficient. With Skimo, the temptation of being able to watch a whole season of Breaking Bad in 20 minutes is just too strong.

Watching the latest TV shows now gains us the same kind of kudos that listening to the coolest bands once did. Maybe it's the recession forcing everyone to stick to their sofa and get their kicks for free or maybe TV really is the new black, but once you're on that bandwagon of keeping up, don't ever fall off.

Sure, you could just swot up on relevant TV hashtags and borrow someone else's opinion, but it's not long before you'll be busted. Keeping tabs on The X Factor via the medium of Twitter is child's play, but the complex world of Game Of Thrones is a whole different challenge. With added dragons. Then there are those hyped series that you watched for a bit, chattered about and then dumped halfway through when something more enticing came along. The Americans, anyone?

If you dare to forget about a gripping series opener and have some semblance of a social life/a passing interest in the World Cup/regular employment, you might as well save yourself the hassle and Skimo it instead. But how does Skimo guarantee you won't miss out on the scene you really want to watch?

"Most long-play films and TV episodes will have six or fewer crucial scenes and by crunching them together we can produce a summary," says Srinivasan. "Crucial scenes are given more focus, are often brighter, have more detail or shots and it is this that the Skimo engine picks up." Independent