RebelMouse, an NYC based startup, launched in June of last year and has become one of the most talked about social startups. Founder Paul Berry, has built a platform that turns your social content into an easy to digest and understand front page. The great part is, you can let it do the organizing for you visualize your content in a way that makes it all easy to touch. We spoke with Berry about the growth of their platform and how TV networks have jumped on board to deliver more social TV experiences.  Read more

As the domain states, followshows.com’s purpose it to allow you to keep track of the shows you watch. Their tagline is ‘Never miss an episode again,’ and with the ability to get notifications via the website, email, and RSS or add the new episode schedule to Google calendar, it’s your fault if you do miss an episode. The site also provides links to legal means of watching an episode (Amazon, the network’s website, and Netflix) and if you’re looking for a new show to watch, they also provide recommendations that are pretty spot-on. Read more

- Panasonic rolls out a recommendation engine for its TV sets that recognizes viewers’ faces and offers up suggestions from both viewing history and what friends are watching. Viewers can also customize a home screen, one for each member of the family. (ZDNet)

- Despite legal battle, Aereo lands $38 million in new funding and announces plans to expand to 22 U.S. cities later this year, starting in late spring. (AllThingsD)

- Second screen startups convene at CES to talk about TV’s great discovery problem. “It takes the average person eight minutes to find something to watch when they sit down,” says BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu. “You end up watching Karate Kid 3 — with commercials — and in SD. It’s what we call ‘sub-optimal.’” (TheNextWeb)

- Continuing its expansion into original content, Hulu is today offering previews of its new programming for 2013, which includes its first animated Hulu Original Series, “The Awesomes,” co-created by Saturday Night Live’s head writer Seth Meyers. (TechCrunch)

- Several social TV execs offered their predictions on a CES panel. Jack Flanagan of BlueFin Labs predicted that at least one major national TV advertiser will put a secondary requirement around social engagement on their ad buys. (CNET)

- New York-based Boxee has joined forces with system-on-chip solutions provider Sigma to move its content streaming and DVR services beyond its own dedicated hardware and into smart TVs being produced by other manufacturers. (TheNextWeb)

Investors continue to place their bets on social TV.In October we wrote about Stevie, the social TV platform that brings your social graph to the main screen. The Israel-based company has just announced a new round of funding and the expansion of their platform to the iPhone. Here are the details. Read more

There’s a new social TV analytics company on the loose. Fizziology “uses human sentiment analysis – real people reading social media chatter from real people – to let networks know which new fall TV shows are driving the most positive and negative buzz online.” Here’s how they’re using humans for social TV analytics and why TV networks are starting to buy in. Read more

Social TV graphics experts Never. No continue to expand their business in interesting and innovative ways. In addition to partnering with a new major broadcast graphics company, they’ve made a big platform update giving advertisings a new way to attack multiple screens. Read more

Nielsen and NM Insight, a joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey and Company, has acquired social TV tracking firm SocialGuide. Terms of the agreement were not immediately available. Brooklyn-based SocialGuide has focused a substantial amount of its efforts on Twitter, which has become the de facto home for real-time conversation surrounding television. SocialGuide’s platform tracks conversations around more than 30,000 programs, across 232 English and Spanish-language channels.

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Since the beginning, GetGlue has been primarily a mobile app experience, but in recent months the social TV startup has been cranking away on the web side of things, as well. In September, it relaunched its site as a destination — with an emphasis on a new social program guide — and today GetGlue released a new set of features to beef up the community aspects of the experience.

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Stevie, a Tel Aviv-based startup has a mission to change the way we consume social on TV. The company, which “turns your Facebook and Twitter into a beautiful television experience,” launched at TechCrunch Disrupt is announcing a big partnership today to bring their service to more devices. We spoke with CEO and Founder Yael Givon. Read more

Chirp Guide recently launched an interesting new startup that’s actually taking best practices from TV programming and scheduling and bringing them to the confusing world of hashtags and live tweeted events. As volume for tweets about TV continues to grow tremendously, it’s harder and hard for consumers to actually find content. We complain about thousands of TV channels that are impossible to find. Chirp Guide is trying to make sense of hundreds of thousands if not more of live tweeted events by bringing an organized infrastructure to a fragmented medium. Read more