With fiber optic networks now bringing us internet connections and TV at top internet speeds, it wasn’t going to be long until the borders became blurred and they all became one big real-time communication tool.
“During the presidential elections, major disasters, sporting events and every episode of ‘Heroes,’ Twitter users went crazy Tweeting about their own experience. TV and social networking can no longer be separated.” That’s a quote from Tech Blogger the Gadgetress, writing about the Verizon FiOS platform that integrates TV, Tweets and Facebooking into one.
At present, Verizon has widgets for weather, traffic, headlines, horoscopes, and community information. There’s also an ESPN Fantasy Football widget which provides stats on your players and scores. Then earlier this week, Verizon FiOS offered details about the integration of Twitter and Facebook widgets for its TV viewers. A beta test with “several hundred” users began last week and is expected to last 120 days.
The new FiOS integration will allow you to quickly tell everyone what TV show you’re watching—and with no typing necessary! (FiOS doesn’t provide a keyboard anyway.) It’ll be something like, “Joe is watching Prison Break on FiOS TV.”
Read Write Web tells us that “DVRs will soon be able to access internet content from YouTube and several other video-sharing portals. And all of this web content is seamlessly woven within Verizon’s on-screen guide alongside traditional programming information.”
But when the widget platform goes live, the potential for an entire ecosystem of widgets are sure to explode and proliferate, with internet speed.
Tags: FiOS, Internet Speed, Social Networking