Social TV Apps

Twitter Powered TV Remote Makes Channel Surfing Social. Google TV may be a bust -- but that doesn't mean that the future of television isn't still all about apps.

Indeed, KDDI R&D Labs might be onto something with a new app that aggregates TV content and commentary via Twitter. Basically, it turns your Android tablet into a social-media-powered TV remote. It's hard to tell just how useful this really is without knowing how to read Japanese. But KDDI's basic insight -- put apps on the remote, not the TV screen itself -- zigs where Boxee, Roku, and everyone else has zagged. But the real smarts in KDDI's social remote comes from its Twitter integration. Even at a quick glance, KDDI's app seems both more powerful and more intuitive for finding, browsing, and cueing up TV content via the web.

The large tablet form factor looks a bit unwieldy for channel-surfing, but KDDI might have the right idea overall. Hey Winners! Social TV Check-In App Introduces the Charlie Sheen Badge. Do you wish you were more like Charlie Sheen?

A Grade-A, tigers blood and Adonis DNA-boasting winner? Well unfortunately you can’t literally take the Charlie Sheen “drug” on your own or “your face will melt off and your children will cry over your exploded body”, but with a new campaign from social TV app Philo you can get a little bit closer to Sheen-dom with a collection of new exclusive badges, inspired by several of the star’s recent quotable quotes.

Starting now, when you check into ’2 And A Half Men’ on Philo you can unlock a collection of hilarious badges, including the ‘Tiger Blood’ award, the ‘Goddesses’ award, the ‘Winning’ award and, of course the ‘Charlie Sheen’ award (not as in the actor himself but as in, “I’m on a drug, it’s called Charlie Sheen!! “). The following information is provided on the Philo website: “Charlie Sheen. Miso Continues To Forge Ahead In The Social TV Arena - SocialTimes.com. Back in April, Neil Vidyarthi let our readers in on a cool service called Miso that brings a fun social aspect to television viewing.

Six months later Miso, which lets users check-in to television shows as they watch, share what they are watching with their friends, earn badges and keep track of their own viewing habits, has grown by leaps and bounds. Katie Smillie (Marketing/Product/Partnerships at Miso) and CEO Somrat Niyogi told me about what’s new at Miso via email. Read on to find out how Miso is working to make television more fun and social. Katie told me that Miso has “been busy working on a ton of new product updates that have been in high demand from [the site's] users and that reflect [the company's] million to make TV watching better.”

The following product updates were recently launched: Focus on specific episodes – In earlier versions of the service, users were able to check-in to a certain show. Check out the video below to see some of these new Miso updates in action. Social TV - SocialTimes.com. IntoNow: A Social TV App That Knows What You’re Watching: Online Video News « 5 Social TV Apps That Let You Check In To What You’re Watching [Updated] These days everything is getting more social.

People tweet before taking a shower, post pictures of their lunch to Facebook and share everything from their hopes and aspirations to the gross thing they saw someone do on the bus ride to work. So it only makes sense that more and more people are interesting in sharing what they’re watching on television, and lucky for these people there are a lot of ways to do it. Here’s our list of 5 great social television apps that let you check in to what you’re watching, share recommendations with friends and discover new content.

IntoNow IntoNow is new on the social TV scene, but they have introduced a feature that pushes them straight to the top of our list – a patented sound-recognition technology called SoundPrint that hears and recognizes what you’re watching, right down to the episode. Tunerfish.