Tweek rolls out of beta, and launches its social TV discovery iPad app

The Next Web is out and about at London Web Summit today, where we’ve already looked at the future of mobile, social and local business, whilst Uber has announced it will be launching in London in time for the Olympics and Jolicloud rolled out a new beta service to help people make sense of their personal cloud.

We also managed to catch up with a berlin-based startup called Tweek, that has just launched a neat new social TV recommendation app for the UK and German markets.

The iPad-only app is essentially a ‘layer’ that pulls together live and video-on-demand (Vod) film and TV content, recommended by a user’s social networks. Now by social networks, I of course mean Facebook, which is required to connect with the app when you first sign-up. Users can also create their own channel, letting other users “tune in”.

It’s important to note that Tweek doesn’t host content, but rather connects up with third parties such as YouTube, Netflix and iTunes. Depending on the agreement in place, you may be able to watch directly on Tweek, but you may also be guided off to watch on a third-party platform. Perhaps ironically, German users will be able to tap BBC content directly via the global version of iPlayer, whereas in the UK, access to BBC content will be restricted to live broadcasts via the UK’s TVCatchup service.

Tweek was incorporated in September 2011 by Sven Koerbitz, Klaus Hartl and Marcel Due, and they tell us that over the coming months, they’ll be working to build more content partnerships.

We’ve written extensively about Zeebox before, the social TV app that recently saw 15,000 new users per hour following a TV ad push. So what’s the difference here? “Zeebox is doing a good job in the UK just now,” says Sven. “Basically, where they start, that’s where we end. They are more focusing on the interaction part, whilst watching TV.”

Indeed, so whilst Zeebox is more about watching in real-time with friends, and ‘chatting’ about what you’re watching, Tweek focuses more on the recommendation and discovery side of things. It’s certainly a beautifully designed app, and it’s well worth checking out.

➤ Tweek