BBC iPlayer is getting some early exposure to the social TV future, ahead of the planned rollout of its own social sharing features later this year, thanks to the addition of the VOD service to social TV watching app Boxee today.
Boxee, which lets users play videos both from their computers and a range of third-party services like YouTube and Hulu, also creates activity feeds (sharable on Twitter, FriendFeed and Tumblr) from users’ viewing habits and favourite shows – clearly, an area ripe for innovation in the next couple of years. iPlayer’s addition means shows watched by BBC users will appear in these activity streams, like Facebook status updates. Boxee, which got $4 million funding in June, also announced at CES today the inclusion of programming from MTV and Joost, which introduced its own activity feed paradigm last year.
The socialisation of TV viewing is surely just around the corner. Set-top box software being touted to broadcast platforms, so far with little success, by Inuk can also tell Facebook which shows a viewer is watching. A Widget Channel, announced by Yahoo and Intel at CES, will, vice versa, bring internet content like MySpace activities on to the TV set. Bring it on…