Cliqset Launches Social TV Application for Boxee's Over-the-Top Platform

Cliqset, a company which has developed a platform for sharing, discovering and discussing content with social-network friends around the Web, on Tuesday launched a real-time conversation application for Boxee's over-the-top-TV platform. Cliqset's platform is designed to tie together over 70 different social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Flickr and Yelp, into "activity streams" that users can share with their friends and to social networks, and thereby to enable real-time communication across those networks and around specific events in users' activity streams. The company's new Boxee app adapts this concept by allowing users to communicate in real time around a specific video.

According to Boxee, the new app (which is available in the Boxee App Box) taps into Boxee's "Now Playing" description, so that whenever a user wants to chat about a video, they load the app while the video is playing, and the app then automatically links them to comments about the video from their social-network friends and others who are watching it (or who have watched it previously). The comments appear via a semi-transparent overlay at the bottom of the video.

Cliqset says that it is making its development library available, so that third-party developers can write additional real-time applications for Boxee. "We have built Cliqset to springboard engaging conversations about any topic and Web content that users find interesting--including online-video," Cliqset co-founder and president, Darren Bounds, said in a prepared statement. "Boxee has built a great experience that makes it easy for people to share what they are viewing across the Internet. We share a vision--where the future of the open Web, online entertainment and social networks are intersecting--so we jumped at the chance to complement their community by bringing in real-time conversations using Cliqset." Added Boxee co-founder and CEO, Avner Ronen: "Boxee is changing what people expect from TV and working to develop new ways to interact with what they are playing, online and offline. As real-time interaction becomes more important, Cliqset is giving people a new way to interact around entertainment. Cliqset's app is a great way to enhance Boxee users' experience, as they have built a digital 'watercooler,' an app that has stretched what's possible on our platform."