Trip Chowdhry, a co-founder and analyst at Global Equities Research, has been interviewing developers ahead of an Apple announcement set for October 16. “All these developers strongly believe that Apple has opened its Apple TV APIs to some big developers including Facebook, Twitter, CNBC and Disney” Chowdhry said. “These developers feel that Facebook and Twitter APIs may be built into (the) Apple TV Platform API, which if true, could jump-start a completely new TV experience called ‘Social TV.'”
“A new experience called ‘Social TV'”? Really?
Regardless, there appears to be strong evidence that Facebook and Twitter will have the opportunity to integrate social features into the next Apple TV release. Adam Levy of The Motley Fool thinks that all companies involved would benefit:
How I imagine Twitter and Facebook integration is Apple TV could enable an app like Hulu Plus to access the Facebook and Twitter application programming interfaces, or APIs, which would allow it to display tweets or Facebook posts related to the programming their watching. Considering every tweet and Facebook post come with a timestamp, the posts could easily be programmed to pop up at exactly the right time.
The interface could work the other way around as well. Video clips or gifs from Apple TV apps could easily be posted to Facebook and Twitter through Apple TV apps pre-filled with the broadcaster’s hashtags.
Despite a great opportunity to do so, Apple TV has not yet distinguished itself from Amazon Fire TV, Roku, or Android TV. The OTT marketplace is crowded, but updated hardware, a true app store, and increased social functionality would continue to encourage cord cutters.