To understand exactly what TV is, you often need to pause and remember how intensely passive the viewing experience is for most. You come home extremely tired, grab a snack and veg out in front of your favorite prime time programming on linear, Netflix, Hulu, iTunes or other content.
Flingo‘s announcement at CES just made the easy, laziness and perfect activity of vegging out a lot more social by adding a component to their platform that lets you share to Facebook and Twitter with one click of the remote. You’re not going to necessarily see a button on your remote with a Facebook or Twitter icon (although that would be pretty cool), instead social sharing is built-into Flingo’s SyncApps platform for connected TV sets, “the world’s fastest automatic content recognition (ACR) platform, which comes pre-installed in millions of Internet-connected television products.” As developers build new synchronized apps for connected TV sets, social sharing comes along for the ride.
Ashwin Navin, their co-founder and CEO, says SyncApps is embedded in more than 7 million Smart TVs, identifying broadcast content within three seconds. “Once identified, SyncApps can immediately bring contextually relevant content directly to the viewer’s TV or to your tablet or laptop, including check-ins, tweets, polls, quizzes, special offers and more. This enables viewers to tweet or Facebook directly from their Smart TV – without having to use another device,” he explains. “SyncApps automatically hooks into the conversations being had on social networks and presents them to the viewer,” he described. “The technology was launched in conjunction with A+E networks, so for example, if a consumer is watching Pawn Stars on HISTORY, with just one-click he can see at-a-glance the #hashtag for the show, what’s being tweeted, who else is watching it, and opt to join the conversation.”
Flingo is already one the leading developers of smart TV apps. While smart TVs are finally becoming mainstream, they’re already experts in cultivating the different app worlds and infusing social in the appropriate parts. Since they’re technology is built into the TVs, “this enables viewers to tweet or Facebook directly from their Smart TV – without having to use another device,” Navin told Lost Remote. The idea of not having to open a device, open an app and tap and type sounds lovely. This kind of sharing will already be part of apps they built for A+E Networks’ HISTORY and A&E channels, “and builds on Flingo’s pre-existing media relationships with companies like TV Guide, CBS, Showtime, Warner Bros., FOX, and many others on platforms like Sanyo, Insignia, Samsung, LG, and Vizio,” according to their release. Don’t lose your remotes just yet, as they just become more social.