Miso Helps Watchers and Networks Annotate TV

The social TV start-up Miso today introduced a new iPhone app built to give added information, products, links and commentary while people are watching TV.

But instead of writing these “SideShows” itself, the company is giving users and TV networks tools to create their own time-stamped text commentary tracks. So a fashion-conscious viewer could plug in product information corresponding to when a character wore an item on screen. Or a sports network could feed live stats alongside a game broadcast.

SideShows will only work for watchers who have DIRECTV and AT&T U-Verse, which have a direct connection to Miso to tell the app what a user is currently watching. Though that’s kind of a big limiting factor, it means the SideShows work with both live and recorded programs.

San Francisco-based Miso recently raised $4 million in new funding led by Vinod Khosla at Khosla Ventures.