Chat through your TV with Cliqset, Boxee
Cliqset, a social content-sharing startup, has launched a partnership with Boxee to let users chat with friends on their TVs. The Gainesville, Fla.-based startup also launched a desktop client for its content sharing site, which resembles a cross between FriendFeed and Twitter. Cliqset pulls in data from about 70 social networks to let you know what your friends are doing across the web, but it doesn’t have the same strict 140-character limits that Twitter enforces.
“We want to show how flexible we’ve made our APIs, so you can add social features in traditional places where you wouldn’t expect to see them,” said Darren Bounds, a co-founder of Cliqset.
To use the service, you have to sign up for Boxee, then add Cliqset’s application from Boxee’s App Box. Once a person has loaded the app, they can talk to friends on TV, as long as they’re watching the same show. Boxee’s a streaming video startup that’s won an ardent fan base for letting people watch online video content on their TVs. It has attracted about a half million users, and raised $6 million in a second round of funding in August.
The company’s new desktop client is similar to Tweetdeck or Seesmic, but is compatible with Cliqset. Based on Adobe AIR, the client lets you send updates out to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn among other social networks. You can also keep track of inbound data from all these sites so that you can comment and discuss them.
Cliqset has raised $2 million to date, all from a single investor named Derek Mercer, who founded Vurv Technology, a talent management startup that human resources company Taleo bought in 2008 for about $130 million.
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Kim-Mai was born and raised a stone's throw from Apple headquarters in Cupertino by a devout Hewlett-Packard family. After attending UC Berkeley, Kim-Mai worked for Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires in New York, Los Angeles, London and Buenos Aires. Follow her on Twitter at @kimmaicutler, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.