Clicker gets social with Clicker Social

The Web TV guide is now the place to see what your friends are watching

Clicker, a leading site to find new Web shows as well as popular TV shows and movies, on Friday announced the launch of Clicker Social, essentially a layer of feature sets that allow its users to discover, share, rate, discuss shows and even check-in shows they watch.

Vator is part of this social movement. As you can see from one of Vator's videos, you can "check-in" to let your friends know what you're watching.

"Social discovery has always been a core tenet of what we've been building," said Jim Lanzone, founder and CEO of Clicker. "When TV goes from being a couple hundred channels to millions of fragmented shows, social features allow users to help each other figure out what's the best thing to watch."

In a world where everything seems social right from the start, the idea of adding a social component doesn't seem very innovative. But the idea of layering a social component after building out a database of content as the foundation, does seem like a smart strategy.

Clicker, which was funded in 2008, and launched in November of last year, spent most of its time building out its library of movies and shows and organizing them in a more consistent and cohesive structure. 

Since launching last fall, Clicker has amassed some 650,000 TV episodes  from the big networks and cable channels and Hulu, which is owned by NBC, Disney and News Corp as well as Web originals from newbies, such as VatorNews. (Note: You can see the nearly 1000 VatorNews videos on Clicker here.)

"You need to have the spine of the book to matter in any category," explained Jim. "You need to have information [first]. You can't lead with social... People need to start engaging around content."

As part of Clicker Social, users will be able to login using their Facebook ID and create profiles and select shows they like. They'll be able to see an activity stream of what's happening within their network, and follow others to check out their shows. It's not dissimilar to the activites on other social networks. In fact, there will even been an awards feature where a person can win a certain badge for watching a certain number of shows on MTV and PBS, among other places.This could be a potential revenue stream in the future as Clicker could charge advertisers for creating brand awareness with the badges.

Clicker also launched Clicker Mobile, whereby users can now access their Clicker channels through their iPhone or Android devices.