TV check-in site Miso raises $1.5M

The site, created by Bazaar Labs, is backed by Google Ventures and Hearst

TV check-in service Miso announced Wednesday morning that it recently closed a Series A round of funding to the tune of $1.5 million.  The round was led by Google Ventures with help from Hearst Interactive Media.  Joe Kraus from Google Ventures and Scott Wolfgang from Hearst will be joining the company’s board.

Like other TV check-in sites, Miso allows users to follow their favorite TV shows and “check in,” comment on episodes, add links, and earn points and badges for check-ins.  Once you register, you select TV shows to follow and then you can read conversations and comments via a Twitter-like feed for each show.  A leaderboard reveals which users have earned the most points.

Miso, created by Bazaar Labs, has garnered nearly 100,000 users and more than two million engagements to date, with engagement appearing to pick-up more within the last month.  Though the site has been around since last summer, it has seen nearly 400,000 engagements (check-ins, comments, likes, etc.) just within the last thirty days, averaging one check-in every 4-5 seconds.

“The opportunity to build an amazing second screen is now,” said Bazaar Labs CEO and co-founder Somrat Niyogi in the company’s announcement.  “TVs are becoming internet enabled.  New guides, new remotes, more tablets – 2011 is the year we’ll see an incredible amount of innovation in the living room, and we are excited to be part of that revolution.”

In addition to the company’s new financing, it also announced a new partnership with OWN, the new Oprah Winfrey Network, for a new reality series in which ten contestants compete for their own TV show. 

TV check-in and tracking sites have been gaining ground in recent months.  GetGlue, which allows users to check-in and rate TV shows, movies, books, and music, has attracted 700,000 users since its launch in 2009.  TV tracking site SideReel recently surpassed one million unique visitors per day and indexes 17,000 TV shows, totaling up to more than 500,000 episodes.  In an interview with VatorNews, SideReel CEO Roman Arzhintar noted that users average check back at SideReel once every three days, and a large number of them return to the site 40-50 times a month.

Miso previously raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding last May and has an app for the iPhone, Android, and the iPad. 

Image source: gomiso.com