TV loyalty service Viggle has agreed to acquire social TV app GetGlue for $25 million and 48.3 million shares in stock, the companies announced today.

“With this deal, we are combining very experienced and creative product, engineering, and management teams that will continue to build great user experiences and provide industry leading platforms for consumers, networks, and advertisers,” Viggle CEO Robert Sillerman said in a statement. “We will also be vastly increasing the Viggle user base and quadrupling our network partnerships.

New York City-based GetGlue was founded in 2007 and lets its 3.2 million registered users “check-in” to TV shows or movies they are watching and stay better connected to their favorite programs. Viggle, which was only launched in January, lets users get rewards like iTunes and Amazon credit for watching TV programs. Viggle has 1.2 million registered users.

GetGlue’s 34 employees will be brought over to Viggle, including GetGlue CEO Alex Iskold, who will take a senior executive position and a slot on Viggle’s board of directors.

“GetGlue has built a social TV product that people love, and Viggle has become their favorite loyalty program for TV,” Iskold said in a statement. “Together we are positioned to deliver the next generation second screen experiences that delight and benefit users, networks, and major brands.”

GetGlue previously raised $24 million in funding from investors including Union Square Ventures and Rho Capital Partners, so this deal isn’t much of an exit. But there’s also the matter of the 48.3 million shares, which could have pushed the deal over the edge. Investors and Iskold may have simply found that consolidating teams and users of Viggle and GetGlue made the most sense to keep GetGlue growing.

Couple watching TV with tablet photo via Goodluz/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Shazam today fine-tuned its song and media identification service to work with television programming on more than 160 channels, at all times.

The Shazam application, which has more than 250 million users around the world, is now capable of “tagging” all television shows in the U.S., excluding some local-only programming. The app provides TV viewers who tag a show with show-related information such as music, cast information, trivia, celebrity gossip, recent tweets, and links to IMDB, Wikipedia, and official show sites.

People using the Shazam for iOS and Android application can also use a new Facebook-powered “Shazam Friends” feature. Once activated, the social functionality adds friends’ tags to the application experience. Additionally, a person’s Shazam tags will show up on his or her Facebook Timeline.

The move, which makes Shazam a fully functional TV companion application, is part of a carefully crafted strategy to become the mobile app people turn to engage with all content around them. The spruced up Shazam for TV experience also makes the senior startup directly competitive with second-screen applications such as GetGlue and Yahoo-owned IntoNow.

The expansion is a milestone moment for 12-year-old Shazam. The London-based company has been aggressively adding to its television playbook since February 2010 when it ran the first-ever television commercial optimized for tagging during Super Bowl XLIV.

Photo credit: caribb/Flickr

Flingo, one of the largest smart TV app publishers, has received another $1 million in funding from entrepreneur Mark Cuban, bringing its total first round to $8 million.

As the company tells it, Cuban first learned about Flingo while strolling by its CES booth earlier this year. After catching a glimpse at the company’s social TV platform, Cuban quickly struck up a conversation with Flingo CEO Ashwin Navin and wiggled his way into the funding round. He’s leading the additional funding together with Gary Lauder, managing director of Lauder Partners. In February, Flingo announced that it raised $7 million from August Capital.

“I’m excited to be part of the Flingo experience,” Cuban — owner of the arthouse cinema chain Landmark and Magnolia Pictures, and chairman of HDNet — said in a statement today. “I truly believe the future of TV is social TV and Flingo will be one of the companies out front.”

Flingo has developed a technology, dubbed SyncApps, that can detect what you’re watching in just a few seconds and communicate that information to your television, smartphone, or computer. Think of it like a location-based service for what you’re watching. SyncApps eliminates the need to track down hashtags or other content related to what you’re viewing, allowing you to seamlessly interact with content while you’re watching it.

The company says it will use the funding to expand its presence among smart TV and device makers. It already has partnerships with Samsung, LG, Vizio, and Western Digital. Navin calls Cuban’s support a “tremendous validation” of the company.

Flingo was founded in 2008 by former early Bittorrent employees Ashwin Navin, Alvir Navin, and David Harrison. The company currently has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities.

Photo via Steven Rosenbaum/Flickr