Part of the excitement around the fact that social TV is still so young is that there’s an entire globe out there ready to hack, create and find new ways to make TV more social. Last week Tweek.TV, another social TV startup emerged in one of my favorite cities, Berlin. Marcel Duee, the company’s co-founder previously worked at a startup (considered to be one of Berlin’s first startups) that was sold to Nokia.
This social TV’s startup mission is to become “your personal video guide,” through their unique algorithms, social integrations and passion for helping you find good TV content. Tweek.TV is iPad only, but not iPad app only. Excitingly, this is a browser-based app that you can only get from your iPad. While the company is now out of stealth mode you still need an invite key to be able to login via Facebook. My favorite feature so far is the ability to mute people whose recommendations you don’t trust.
While there are many social TV startups out there it’s good to know competition from around the globe is increasing. Duee offered the first ten Lost Remote readers to follow @tweek_tv and tweet this pre-filled tweet he made, a beta invite. We interviewed Duee about his new product.
Lost Remote: What’s your background? How did you create the company?
Marcel Duee: Background: we were with gate5 (considered by some to be “Berlin’s first start-up.”) and Plazes which both got acquired by Nokia. The founder of gate5, Christophe Maire, was elected as Best Angel/ Seed investor of the Year 2011. Christophe helped us a lot to kick off Tweek TV.
In late 2010 we started toying around with first sketches and ideas of what later became Tweek TV. We just wanted to change the way TV worked for us. It was really driven from our own, unsatisfying experience with current TV. Everybody loves watching TV even though it sucks most of the time. We zap through channels and end up watching something we don’t really care about just because it’s on. With high end content distribution becoming accessible to anyone online, people are increasingly faced with the dilemma of choice. This is where Tweek TV comes in. We want to be your go-to entertainment guide when it comes to future TV consumption. Whether it’s live shows, on-demand or niche online content, we want to ensure that you discover and watch shows that are relevant to you by tapping into your social interest. While we don’t believe that people will stop browsing or settling, we want to make sure that you browse through and settle for shows that are worth your while.
LR How does it work?
MD: Users connect existing social network accounts (for now: Facebook) with Tweek TV. We then start a data mining process to extract the users’ interests and that of their friends to create the personalized, social video discovery experience.
LR: Are you launching in Germany/Europe only?
MD: No, we will be launching in the US and Canada, too. Actually, our current product offers a wider variety of content partners in the US than in Europe as the US has more advanced Video on Demand services, such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon VoD, which are not present in Europe, yet.
LR: How is social TV different in Europe than the US?
MD:
1. The European market is behind in it’s development. for sure!
2. Very little Twitter integration of broadcasters so far => no innovation around this yet such as social leader boards or live interaction. This is also due to less Twitter penetration in most parts of Europe.
3. Social TV is often related to live TV as it is around interaction/ social sharing/ self expression. Live TV is very much fragmented between the different countries in Europe so there is no homogenous market you can work on.
LR: What are the best features of Tweak.TV?
1. Unique matching algorithm of Facebook Likes to TV shows and movies => best results compared with any competitor we know out there.
2. Mute people whose taste you don’t trust
3. Create beautiful mini reviews for your shows and movies and share them easily with your friends