Blurring the Line Between iPad and TV With the exception of the movie watching that people do on services like Netflix, a lot of Web video viewing is the entertainment equivalent of snacking - bite-sized sessions that last no more than a few minutes a day. In other words, it is totally unlike the hours that people spend plopped on their couches in front of their television sets. A San Francisco start-up called Remixation is trying to change that with an app for the iPad, Showyou, that is designed to answer the question: What's playing on the Web? The app is a bit like a video-only version of Flipboard, the popular app that lets you browse content that your friends on Facebook and Twitter are sharing in an attractive, magazine-like format. Showyou sucks up all of the video clips from YouTube, Vimeo and elsewhere that friends share on social networks, displaying thumbnail images and titles from the videos in a grid format that is easy on the eyes. Unlike the clunky television programming guides that show all of your viewing options on your cable box, you can use your fingers to easily pan around the Showyou video grid - up, down, right, left and even diagonally. Showyou also lets you mix videos into the guide that it has selected itself from the Web through various media partners. The company on Wednesday released a new version of Showyou through Apple's App Store with some new features for fiddling with the types of videos you are browsing - for instance, you can explore videos tagged with the same Twitter hashtags. There is nothing in the Showyou guide that you can't find somewhere else on the Internet. But Mark Hall, the founder and chief executive of Remixation, says Showyou gives users a video-watching experience more akin to television, rather than the "occasional-stumbling-across-something model" of Facebook and Twitter. "This is more the I'm-going-to-turn-it-on experience," Mr. Hall said. It's sitting down and watching. You don't do that with Facebook and Twitter because you can't. In an interview, Mr. Hall shared some nifty stats that show how different the behavior of Showyou viewers is from that of typical Web-video watchers. The average video watching session of a Showyou user on the iPad is 35 to 40 minutes. While a lot of Web video watching occurs around midday when people are at the office, prime time for Showyou viewers is pretty much the same as prime time on televisions: 8 to 11 p.m. Afternoons on Saturdays and Sundays are also big times for Showyou. In contrast, the amount of time the average person spends on YouTube is about eight minutes a day, according to estimates from Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research. For Netflix, it's about 64 minutes a day, Mr. Greenfield estimates. Mr. Hall said that over the past nine months the iPad has illustrated the direction television is going in. "This is becoming the TV," he said, holding one of Apple's tablets in his hand.