Verizon Communications (US) this week launched the Widget Bazaar, a virtual application store which gives its television service subscribers more ways to engage with TV content. One of the first widgets available integrates Facebook on the customer’s television set.

Fios TV viewers can continue watching a TV show while accessing their Facebook account on the other half of the screen. When in the Facebook application, Fios TV subscribers can view status updates, photos, and other posted items from their friends or from their own page. Since the application allows pictures to be blown up on a big screen TV, (…) sharing pictures with friends and family from Facebook will become one of the primary uses of the Facebook Widget.

[The] Facebook widget allows users to update their status based on what they are watching on TV. But other updates aren’t possible in this first version of the software.

Verizon says it is not trying to replicate the Facebook experience from the Web on the TV, but other features and functions will be added down the road.

For example, in its first release, the Facebook Widget only allows one user account to be accessed per set-top box. In a few weeks, the application will allow multiple Facebook members to view their profiles and their friends’ profiles from a single set-top box.

Like

Unlike