‘Social TV’ Platform Stevie Inks $1.5M In New Funding, Launches Cool iOS App To Turn Social Feeds Into TV Channels

We first heard about Stevie under the radar a few months ago. The company was in stealth and wouldn’t say too much, but we gathered it was some kind of clever mashup of social feeds which could be displayed on smart TVs. They they came out the door earlier this year with a very interesting product at TechCrunch Disrupt – so interesting that they have now secured a $1.5 million Series A funding round from Horizons Ventures bringing their total funding raised to $2.1 million. The startup is also launching the Stevie iPhone app, which joins the iPad, Web and Windows 8 versions. The funding will be used to develop the app across to the Xbox, Android and more connected TVs.

Stevie is, well, cute. It turns your Facebook and Twitter feed into a TV style format – and it prioritises images and video in the fee to give it that ‘social TV feel’. Viewers’ social content, along with other popular material from around the web, is brought to you in customised channels. It’s hard to think of another app out there quite like it.

Yael Givon, CEO and co-founder says he wants to bridge “the gap we see between social content and the broadcast experience.”

The new iPhone version includes all the latest content from friends and “channels” such as “The Comedy Strip”; “Music Non Stop”; and Celeb TV – all social feeds turned into a TV experience. It’s actually pretty cool to see it in action, and hard to describe unless you try it out. There are also remote control apps available for iPhone and Android.

Based out of Tel Aviv, Stevie’s team comes out of TV writing, editing and presenting, as well as tech.

Stevie was founded in October 2011, with a seed round of $600k from angel investors, including Jeff Pulver, Gigi Levy and Internet Media Group. Since then, Stevie graduated in September from the first Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure program.