Israel-based video curation startup Stevie added Chromecast support to its iOS and Android apps Tuesday, allowing Stevie users to beam their socially curated online video channels to Google's (S GOOG) streaming stick.
Stevie is one of a number of video curation apps that promises to help you find things to watch online by tapping into your Facebook (S FB) and Twitter (S TWTR) feeds. However, it comes with a twist: Stevie also uses tweets, photos and status updates shared on these social networks and displays them alongside a personalized, continuous video stream, which kind of makes it feel like MTV (S VIA) -- if MTV was programmed by your Facebook friends.
I played a little with the Android tablet version of the Stevie app with Chromecast support this week, and it largely works as advertised, even though channel switching seemed to take a bit longer than when used on the mobile device alone. Also, Stevie's tickers and sidebar, which actually can be quite entertaining when used on a tablet, felt a bit overwhelming on TV. Luckily, you can make them all disappear by switching to fullscreen mode.
This could be more engaging: Stevie casting a video to my Chromecast.
And finally, there just seemed to be something missing with regards to the interface of the app in second-screen mode. Stevie doesn't show any art, contextual information or any other eye-pleaser while playing a video, which feels like a wasted opportunity, especially for an app that usually likes to communicate that much.
Still, the launch of Chromecast support does make sense for Stevie, and it follows other apps that have also embraced the metaphor of a TV-like endless stream of videos for Chromecast. The latest example for this is Qplay, the video service that was started by TiVo's(S TIVO) co-founders, which added Chromecast support earlier this month.