On The Heels Of Zeebox, Getglue Gets $12M In New Financing, Reaches 2M Users Milestone

written by: Richard Kastelein

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Published on Thursday, 12 January 2012 11:04

Only days after Zeebox announced $15 million in investment from Sky, GetGlue, a provider of social television and second screen applications, is pleased to announce that it closed a $12M round of financing led by Rho Ventures. Habib Kairouz, managing partner at Rho Ventures will join GetGlue’s board of directors. The company previously raised $6M in November of 2010. Existing investors - TimeWarner, RRE Ventures, and Union Square Ventures - all participated in this round.

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Rho Ventures” said Alex Iskold, Founder and CEO of GetGlue. “In 2011 GetGlue emerged as a leader in the new and rapidly growing social television space. With this funding, GetGlue will continue to play a market defining role as social television goes mainstream.”

This financing follows a year of strong growth for GetGlue. In 2011 GetGlue reached the 2 Million user milestone. Check-ins grew 1000% and crossed 100M for the year. GetGlue’s database now contains over 350 Million check-ins, ratings, and reviews.

This announcement comes on the heels of GetGlue winning Mashable’s ‘Breakout Startup of the Year Award,’ in addition to other awards in 2011 including Advertising Age’s ‘Media Vanguard Award,’ and being named among the ‘Top 10 Innovators in Video’ by Fast Company.

75 major television networks are using GetGlue’s marketing dashboard to reach and reward fans of 680 popular shows. Top broadcast networks - ABC, CW, FOX, and NBC as well as top cable networks including A&E, ABC Family, AMC, BRAVO, CNN, Discovery, Food Network, FX, HBO, MTV, Showtime, TNT, and USA - are managing their shows on GetGlue, rewarding fans, and monitoring analytics.

In addition, over 30 major media companies have embedded GetGlue’s check-in platform into their apps and web sites. Notably DIRECTV is now using GetGlue to power check-ins and their social television guide on the first screen.

GetGlue has also announced a significant update of their flagship iPhone app and GetGlue.com web site. The updates include a visual stream of check-ins, the ability to participate in multiple conversations, and a personalized recommendation feature called Guides.

The new conversation screen is particularly interesting. GetGlue has developed a real-time filtering technology to reduce noise and help fans enjoy chatting with each other as they watch TV. The screen includes the ability to switch between recent conversations and makes it easy to spend an evening chatting with friends and fans on the second screen.

GetGlue’s product road map for 2012 includes innovations around personalization, rich media content, and the ability for networks to further customize their presence on the service. In addition, GetGlue will invest in their platform and help facilitate embedding check-ins into more third party applications and web sites.