We wrote about Flingo in November and learned that BitTorrent cofounder Ashwin Navin had built a company that develops smart TV apps across multiple platforms. Navin hinted at some big social TV announcements that his company would make, and they launched with A+E Networks to make your remote more social.
Now the San Francisco-based company is the latest social TV startup to raise a large chunk of cash. August Capital is placing their bets on this company’s success, and we think it’s a good one. Major social TV innovations aren’t always in the form of a brand new app with tons of functionalities and a dream at becoming a platform. Identifying small problems, like building an Apple Air-Play type technology for all web video and allowing a one button-remote tap to social media are exactly the kinds of tools that will help TV become more social in a connected-TV world. Here’s an explanation from their release on how they’ll spend the money:
“The funding will be used to expand Flingo’s device footprint as well as its automatic content recognition (ACR) infrastructure, which identifies thousands of broadcast network programs around the world in real-time. Once identified, Flingo’s SyncApps technology can immediately bring contextually relevant content directly to the viewer’s TV, laptop, tablet or smart phone.”
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This proves Fingo will be making a major play at all the second screen apps that already exist.