Verizon Brings Twitter and Facebook to the TV

Verizon, one of the largest cable and Internet providers in the US, is launching a new feature for its FiOS cable service. Dubbed Widget Bazaar, it enhances the viewing experience with a set of small applications with various purposes. Among them there are a couple that bring Twitter and Facebook integration to the big screen.

App stores have been popping out left and right, especially in the mobile sector, after the success of the Apple App Store but Verizon is taking a slightly different approach as all of the apps will be approved by the company and will come only from trusted developers. This will make for a smaller catalogue but with better applications.

Verizon already offers a number of widgets, mostly generic ones like weather or news feeds. For now though most of the activity will be one way and there is little interaction from the user. "We are not trying to re-create the PC experience on the TV," Shawn Strickland, VP of video solutions for Verizon Communications, said, as cited by Cnet. "We're trying to enhance the TV viewing experience."

This is why the first iteration of the Twitter won't allow users to post tweets or even keep up with what their friends are saying. In fact it uses Twitter in a much more interesting way, supplementing the content on screen with real-time reactions and thoughts. The tweets are added based on real-time Twitter searches for certain topics or categories or on what is currently running on TV. Better integration is expected in the future, which will allow users to eventually tweet from their TVs.

The Facebook app is somewhat similar in functionality, with little interaction from the users, but it does allow them to post status updates with the program they are currently watching. Besides the status updates, the app does the usual things, allowing users to browse their friends' status updates and even photos or other content from their pages. Photos can be viewed in full screen and Verizon believes this will be the primary way people will use the Facebook app in.