The team that launched the social TV guide startup Fav.tv is joining TVGuide.com. “This is an ‘acqui-hire’ in the truest sense of the word,” TVGuide.com GM Christy Tanner told us. The two Fav.tv engineers will be joining TVGuide’s mobile development team, and the Fav.tv service will shut down in the next few weeks.
Tanner said they’ll be helping TVGuide’s team incorporate the Watchlist service — currently only available on TVGuide.com — into its mobile apps. “Our most requested feature from our mobile customer service is for users to be able to sync their Watchlist with the app,” Tanner explained, adding that TVGuide apps have been downloaded 6.5 million times “and they’re growing really quickly.”
Watchlists are personalized entertainment guides that allow TV viewers to find and follow their favorite shows, celebs and teams across linear TV, video on demand and online services like Netflix. To date, 500,000 of them have been created on TVGuide.com. Fav.tv says it’s working on a way that would allow its users to export their data over to TVGuide.
Fav.tv said in a blog post:
In order to carry on our mission and make an impact on a much larger scale, our team has joined with TV Guide Digital, which has built some of the most successful online and mobile entertainment products in the world. We’re excited to join the TV Guide team, whose innovative website and fast-growing mobile apps reach a massive audience. We’re looking forward to contributing to TV Guide Digital’s mission of enhancing the TV watching experience of TV fans everywhere.
Fav.tv launched at DEMO back in September of last year. “We address the problem of information chaos. It’s hard to know when shows are on and where they’re available,” explained co-founder and engineer Saverio Mondelli in our September story. “Our mission is to make TV information more readily available and make it so users can quickly find the things they want to know about their favorite shows.”
Adds Christy Tanner about Watchlists, “It truly does make TV simple again in a world in which consumers have so many choices.” She said the Watchlists will be coming to mobile in the next several months.