This article was published on October 4, 2010

Twitter comes to Google TV: here’s what you need to know.


Twitter comes to Google TV: here’s what you need to know.

Hot on the heels of the Google TV website launch, Twitter has just pushed out some information about the Twitter application for Google TV. According to the Twitter blog, the platform will support “most of the features and functionality that you’d expect from Twitter”.

What does that mean? It appears that we’ll be able to browse our timelines, take a look at mentions, and even look at favorites. You’ll be able to reply, retweet and favorite new tweets, or even share them. There appear to be some other great functions, as well:

For example, you can visit a URL or click a hashtag to search for it on Twitter. If a user is mentioned, you can visit that user’s profile to see their Tweets or follow them. And if there is a link to a photo or video, you can see a thumbnail version. Clicking the link will take you to the site so you can see a larger version of the photo or watch the video.

This is hardly a groundbreaking Twitter application, but it does seem to be full-featured enough to keep users of all levels content.

Twitter itself also becomes deeply integrated into the Google TV experience when the application is installed: “Downloading Twitter for Google TV also lets you share web pages, pictures, and other content on Twitter – just look for the “Share” option and select Twitter.”

While the whole Google TV platform seems a lot like what we saw years ago with WebTV, the idea makes a lot more sense now. Given how engaged we all area with Twitter, Facebook and the like, it goes hand in hand with a viewing experience like it never did in the past.

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