TweetTV, the social media TV Guide, discovery tool, and Twitter-based social media platform, is launching what it calls “super responsive designed” mobile HTML5 applications that will work across multiple platforms. The company believes that through these non-native apps, users can follow links to its platform and use the service all through the mobile web browser — all without needing to install anything.
This Austin, Texas-based company offers its users several features, including a real-time localized TV guide that displays what programs are popular on TV at any time. Additionally, it offers the ability to monitor tweets, participate in discussions, and have multi-user video conversations with anyone else who’s talking about a show, game, movie, or anything about the television. TweetTV was started in 2009 by Bradley Markham, a former Google employee who was one of the first account optimization specialists in its AdWords department.
The company say that with its HTML5 mobile solution, it will be able to present different user interfaces on tablets and smartphones. In the future, it says tweaks will be made to improve speed and make it feel more native-like.
Also being announced today is the creation of a rewards program that TweetTV has set up for its users, offering instant coupons, gift cards and other incentives. It has partnered with PaeDae, a prize network, to deliver real-time rewards when users perform “certain actions on our site.” — one of which is tweeting about what they’re watching. Through repeated use, users can aggregate points that can be exchanged for goods and entries into contests for prizes.
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How exactly does TweetTV distinguish itself from all the myriad of social TV services out there? Markham says that in terms of the product, his company offers a discovery tool that allows users to find programs (and see their current “social buzz status”) by selecting a combination of genres, networks, and more. It aggregates tweets beyond a simple hashtag and also offers filters for users to dive deeper, while also enabling tweets to be found based on specific keywords, friends, cast members, and other items. TweetTV also uses a live tags feature, which it says is “an industry first” and displays real-time trends within tweets about a specific TV program while also allowing users to follow it for “intelligent tweet discovery”.
The company has raised $750,000 in seed fundings from angel investor Joe Kalfa.
Photo credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
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