Connected TV Experts Flingo and Linkin Park Team Up to Reach Fans Over the Top (OTT) on Smart TVs

Posted by Richard Kastelein in Breaking News on December 04, 2011  |  0 Comments More from this author  |    |  Follow Richard Kastelein on: Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube

Flingo, the leading publisher of applications for the smart TV, thas announced a partnership with Linkin Park to create the band's official app for Smart TVs. Designed in collaboration with the band, Flingo's Linkin Park app will utilize the smart TV as a platform to distribute video, behind-the-scenes footage of studio sessions and concerts, photos and tour dates. The app will soon be available on Smart TVs including Insignia, LG, Samsung, Vizio, Sanyo, Western Digital, and Netgear devices.

"Flingo provides us with a new way to connect with our fans and give them immediate access to our videos," says Joe Hahn, of Linkin Park. "With our app available in the newest Internet Connected HD TVs, we know our videos are going to look great and sound amazing. Plus, the app gives us total creative control over the format and frequency of which we can reach viewers and listeners, an uncommon luxury for most musicians today."

Flingo's application publishing suite seamlessly integrates the web with the TV experience. This enables an ecosystem where media companies, artists and brand sponsors converge on consumer hardware platforms to give viewers a more engaging and personal TV experience. Viewers will enjoy more content on TV than ever before in a highly personalized, interactive experience. Additionally, they can share their favorite moments across popular social networks. Flingo is currently available on 7.2 million screens, in 117 countries worldwide.

"We're very honored to launch Linkin Park's app for Smart TVs," says Alvir Navin, co-founder of Flingo. "As a musician myself, I am always looking for ways that artists can bring their creativity to large audiences directly. Linkin Park is one of the biggest rock bands of all time, so people are going to love 24 hour access to the band's latest news and videos in the convenience of their TV with all the sound fidelity of a home theater environment."

 

Natan Edelberg has interviewed them extensively over at Lost Remote:

Lost Remote: What TV companies have you built apps for and how has Flingo grown with the Smart TV Market?

Ashwin Navin: Fox, CBS, TV Guide, MTV (for Atom and Game Trailers), Warner Brothers Television, TMZ. When all of these [Smart TVs] first came to market a year and a half ago, Netflix, Pandora, maybe a Facebook or Twitter app and maybe a weather application was all that existed. We wanted to bring a lot more and allow content creators to launch more apps and brand them. We brought 70 to the market so someone like Fred or FreddieW, with over 10 million subscribers on YouTube can have their own app sitting next to Netflix

LR: What's your business model?

AN: Sponsor driven – all of the videos carry a sponsor and have a placement. In the ecosystem, the advertiser gets brand name inventory, media company gets a percentage, Flingo gets a percentage and the TV manufactuerer gets a percentage.

Lost Remote: Why are you giving the manufacturers a cut?

AN: Consumer electronic manufacturing is a terrible business now, it exists in a very low margin, when they open their platform up to content. We align everyone's interests by involving them in the revenue. By next year there will be many more millions of [Smart] TVs in these households. The difficulty right now, is the TV manufacturers are not software companies. The challenges we have to overcome, is to develop software for their platforms that's easy to go live. Only Netflix can afford to hire 20 engineers to do it.

Founded in 2008, Flingo delivers a more engaging TV experience through its portfolio of applications. Flingo publishes more Smart TV apps than any other company in the world and is a product and service of Free Stream Media Corp. For more information, go to http://www.flingo.tv .