“Foursquare for TV” app Miso gets seed funding

Bazaar Labs, the creator of a mobile application for sharing what movies and television you’re watching called Miso, just announced that it has raised a seed round of undisclosed size.

Miso is modeled on Foursquare, the mobile application for sharing your location with friends. Foursquare creates a social gaming experience around where you are, and Miso creates a similar experience about what you’re watching. Users “check in” to let their friends know what they’re watching and can also post their commentary. Then they win various badges as rewards for certain kinds of activity.

Cofounder and chief executive Somrat Niyogi told me he sees the announcement of Google TV, a service for accessing the Web and Android applications on your television, as a sign of growing interest in the creation of a richer experience around TV watching. But he said it’s probably easier for viewers to access that experience through a second device, rather than on the TV itself — namely, through the iPhone or now through the computer via the Miso Web application, which is launching today. There’s also an iPad version of Miso on the way, Niyogi said.

The San Francisco startup’s funding comes from a number of well-known angel investors, including early PayPal employee/Slide executive Keith Rabois, YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim, and early Google employees Georges Harik, Richard Chen, Thomas Korte, and Kurt Abrahamson. (Disclosure: Harik is an investor in VentureBeat.) Rabois has also signed on as an advisor.

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