Story by
Martin Bryant
FounderMartin Bryant is founder of Big Revolution, where he helps tech companies refine their proposition and positioning, and develops high-qualit Martin Bryant is founder of Big Revolution, where he helps tech companies refine their proposition and positioning, and develops high-quality, compelling content for them. He previously served in several roles at TNW, including Editor-in-Chief. He left the company in April 2016 for pastures new.
Beamly, the social TV startup that recently rebranded from Zeebox, has an interesting new Chrome extension out today. Beamly OnDemand works with three UK catch-up TV services and displays tweets about the shows as you watch, in real time as they were tweeted when the shows were transmitted.
It’s debatable whether seeing tweets about a show you’re watching scroll along next to it is useful in all cases, but for big ‘event TV’ and dramas it could be fun. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of functionality; the idea goes back to now-dead Rewinder in 2011, but it’s the first time we’ve seen it bolted on to catch-up TV services.
Beamly OnDemand supports BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and 4OD and was developed by Guy Nesher and Dan Wong during the DevLabs Live hackathon in May this year. You can read more about the tricky technical issues that needed to be overcome in order to make the extension work on Beamly’s blog.