Since our initial 1.0 release of Sidecastr for iPad back on June 28th of this year, our product team has been working hard to bring out our first major iPad app update. So today, we are incredibly excited to be able to announce to the Sidecastr community that Sidecastr for iPad 1.1 should be available shortly, most likely in the next 5 – 7 days, as soon as it emerges from the app store approval process!
Internally we call this version our “Facebook” release. That’s because, you guessed it, in addition to our initial deep 2-way Twitter integration for sharing tweets with the show fan community, we now offer a carefully thought-out Facebook integration that facilitates group conversations between Facebook friends who watch the same shows – and this is huge – even if they’re not all watching at the same time!
As you probably know, there are other second screen apps that integrate with Facebook. In theory, it’s wonderful to be able to chat with friends who are watching the same show at the same time in the same timezone as you are. In practice, because of time-shifting, device shifting, and time zone differences, most people find that they’re solo or, if they’re lucky, able to find only one or two other friends online concurrently. How sad :(.
Sidecastr’s new ‘My Friends’ feature fixes all that. As a DVR for social TV related comments, we capture and play back friends’ sidecasts in sync to each person’s own unique viewing time frame. So if I’m watching The Voice live on air in NYC and make a comment, my friend in Boston who adds a 10 min lag to skip commercials, my friend in San Francisco who can’t watch for 3 hours, and my 3rd friend who watches episodes the next day on Hulu will all see my comment appear in the app at the exact moment in the show I posted about. You and your Facebook friends’ sidecasts and replies all just filter into the new ‘My Friends’ smart-category once you each make the one time link to Facebook from Sidecastr’s settings. Of course if you’re all watching live at the same time it all just works too. It’s easy. And it’s amazing.
Here’s the complete list of What’s New points as submitted to the app store:
Facebook Integration:
● Sidecast with Facebook friends – regardless of whether you’re all watching at the same time – via ‘My Friends’ smart-category
● Automatically check-in the show you are watching to your Facebook timeline
● Post your sidecast and thumbnail image capture of the scene to Facebook
● Use your Facebook account to sign inMore:
● Optimized for iOS6
● Memory improvements: storage consumed per episode now over 50% less!
● Resolved issue where deleting show didn’t free up memory
● Many other enhancements, usability improvements, performance improvements, and bugfixes
Sidecastr 