Dijit’s been relatively quiet since the beginning of the year when it launched its iPad app. Now, the social TV startup led by Jeremy Toeman has launched NextGuide, a new iPad app that “brings personalization into the core of the TV discovery process, and connects people with shows they want to watch contextually based on interests, geography and personalities rather than times and channels,” according to the company. We spoke with Toeman who demo’d the app for us in New York.
Last year felt like the battle of the TV check in, and now 2012 is finishing off as the battle of the second screen platform with several apps gunning to be your social TV guide of choice. Zeebox is poised to launch in the US with rumors of a big Comcast partnership. TVGuide has launched a more powerful app than ever. GetGlue has taking their hundreds of millions of data points to launch a social guide. yap. TV is expanding around the globe. And now Dijit, which built it’s expertise by allowing you to actually control your TV from the app, wants to be the go-to place for discovery.
The new app features a slick design, displaying a scrollable mosaic of TV show graphics. Dijit says NextGuide is the “first-ever TV app for iPad that combines social features with any customers’ live TV listings, DirecTV DVR scheduling, and Netflix, HuluPlus, and iTunes content for search and playback, into the same view.” Toeman has big plans to move beyond just DirecTV DVR scheduling. “We think we’ll be within 50 million homes within a month or two,” he told Lost Remote. (Watch a video demo).
“People would love to watch shows that match their interests, but don’t necessarily know where they are,” Toeman described. The integration with Netflix, Hulu Plus and iTunes all combine with their aim to create easily-searchable topics and interests to help you find TV. For example, a “food” filter (above) displays all the available and upcoming food-related shows. You can also filter by actors and cities, too.
Toeman and his team are confident NextGuide is going to be the social discovery platform of choice. He described that their aim is that “what Spotify does for music, we want to do for TV — to get lost in it.”