Althea Systems Unveils Shufflr "Social Video Browser"

Althea Systems--a San Francisco-based start-up that bills itself as "focused on building solutions that simplify online video discovery and consumption across multiple screens," and which says it recently raised $3 million in a Series A funding round--on Monday announced the official launch of a "social video browser" called Shufflr. According to the company, the browser, which is located at http://shufflr.tv and which is designed for watching OTT video in "lean-back" mode, "blends learning algorithms and social graphs to steer videos towards you from all over the Web," and provides viewers with video recommendations, a social video feed and a trending video feed. "With online video disrupting traditional ways of consuming video, Shufflr is a neat transition from broadcast-style video delivery to personalized video-on-demand," Althea CEO, Vinod Gopinath, said in a prepared statement. "You have a convenient lean-back model where videos come to you but with all the interactive, social functionality of today's Web when you need it."

According to Althea, Shufflr serves as a "video sieve" that sifts through millions of online videos and picks those that are relevant to the viewer, based on the latter's profile and viewing history. The company says that the browser's social video feed enables viewers to see what their online friends have been watching, and that its trending video feed allows them to see which videos are currently popular on the Web. The browser also allows viewers to bookmark, tag, search for, and share videos, and to follow other users with similar tastes and see what they have been watching--thus, Althea says, "bringing a Twitter-like experience to online video."

The Shufflr desktop client is based on Althea's ShuffleFeed video discovery platform, which the company claims quickly enables innovative video apps on Web sites, Facebook, notebooks, phones, tables, TV sets and other platforms and devices. It offers an API that allows publishers to enhance their existing offerings with ShuffleFeed video feeds, according to the company. Althea claims that apps using the ShuffleFeed platform allow users to seamlessly shift from one device to the next and continue where they left off. In addition, the company says, users benefit from the fact that content from various publishers is homogenously integrated into the system--instead of being relegated to "independent silos"--thus enabling "seamless" search, recommendations and video associations across video sites. A demo video for Shufflr is embedded above.