Verizon Integrates Twitter, Facebook into FiOS TV

By PCMag Staff

July 15, 2009

For compulsive users of Twitter, Verizon's latest FiOS TV service enhancement will sound like pure brilliance. On Wednesday, the company is introducing a new set of widgets that will allow all FiOS customers to view Twitter posts and Facebook updates alongside their live television feeds.

Shades of WebTV? Definitely not, says Shawn Strickland, Verizon's vice president of FiOS product management. "We don't want to bring the Internet to the television," he said. "What we want to do is augment the television with an Internet experience that is more compelling, more contextual."

To that point, FiOS's new Twitter widget allows customers to see the Twitter stream (users just initially log into the account and then just need a ID code to access it during future sessions). It can also show you top Twitter trending topics ("Bastille Day" and "Baron" were popular when I saw the demo), search Tweets and even show you a Twitter stream relating to the current TV show you're watching.

You can't post tweets directly through the widget, but then who would want to? You're still using the FiOS remote to navigate the feeds, clearly a sub-optimal interface for tweeting. Strickland told me that, for now, he assumes customers will either sit with their phone or laptop and type in their tweets as they watch the rest of the conversation scroll by on their screen. The interface is actually a side-by-side setup, with live TV is on the left and the Twitter widget to the right.

The Facebook widget has received a similar treatment and is also a subset of all the content you'd typically find on your Facebook homepage. As with Twitter, users sign in (with one account only, for now) and then access their content with a four-digit code. Verizon reps told me the latter is a simple form of parental control.

Inside the Facebook widget are links to the user's list of friends, a profile page, status updates, and albums. The widget lets users automatically feed what show they're watching directly to the Facebook updates feed.

Both new widgets are part of Verizon's updated Widgets platform, which Strickland said simplifies the coding and verification process so partners can build new widgets in as little as two weeks. The Twitter and Facebook tools should work for all existing FiOS customers and could arrive on set-top boxes over the next few weeks.

Along with the new social interaction, Verizon is updating its Media Manager software, which allows users to stream photos and videos from their computers to FiOS set-top boxes. The latest version adds the ability to stream videos from connected desktops to FiOS set-top boxes. It'll also give customers access to third party videos from Veoh, Daily Motion and Blip (for basic parental control, access to these features will also be controlled via an access code). All streamed video is recoded to MPEG 2 for optimal performance. Strickland said Verizon is looking at YouTube access as well, but didn't outline a delivery plan.

Most of the third-party, Web-based video I saw during the demonstration looked pretty bad on a large-screen HDTV, but Strickland assured me that the quality could only be as good as the source material.

With all this Internet video-streaming capability, it's only natural to wonder if FiOS could soon be offering Hulu and NetFlix "Watch Now" capabilities. However, Verizon views each service as, essentially, video-on-demand competitors, not partners, Strickland said. "We don't think there's a lot of content on Hulu that we don't have on VOD," he said.

FiOS's new video capabilities are only available to customers who pay for the Media Manager upgrade (currently sold as part of the services HD DVR content sharing capabilities).

Verizon's competitor, Cablevision, lacks a media manager, Internet integration within the company's set-top boxes will arrive in future generations of the hardware, a company representative said.