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Social "check-in" service GetGlue waited until nearly halfway through January to release its 2011 infographics. That same day, it closed a $12M round of financing led by Rho Ventures, with participation from TimeWarner Investments, RRE Ventures and Union Square Ventures. At the end of 2011, GetGlue hit two million users and logged 100 million check-ins. The site is only two years old, yet it has grown 1000% year over year. The million user mark came in April 2011. From just January to September 2011,it saw an 800% increase.

Today GetGlue, the service that lets users "check-in" to watching TV shows, reading books, listening to music and even thinking about products, announced major updates for its website and iPhone app.

If you haven't heard of GetGlue, don't worry. Here's how it works: After you've checked in to the entertainment you're experiencing, GetGlue tells you who else is thinking about it, how many times you've checked-in, where it is trending on the site and how many others are currently checked into it. It connects people around entertainment, a trend that is increasingly becoming more mainstream as social TV expands. GetGlue saw an 800% increase from the beginning of the year to September.

This year wasn't the first time any of us heard about the impact of social media on television. People have talked about TV shows on Facebook and Twitter for about as long as those social networks have existed, and the trend has only accelerated as social media usage in general has exploded.

Last year, chatter on Twitter helped the MTV Video Music Awards boost its audience to the biggest it had been in eight years. In 2011, services like Twitter and Facebook served as the virtual water cooler for just about every major news story and broadcast media event. It may not have been invented this year, but 2011 was pivotal for social TV.

Social TV and entertainment check-in app GetGlue pushed out an update today that brings real-time chat, Tumblr integration and new Web widgets that let users show off their accumulated badges.

Once a user checks into a show, movie, album, video game or other form of entertainment, they can engage in a conversation with others. It prioritizes updates from one's friends, but mixes in "interesting" comments from others and select updates from Twitter.

This week we're reviewing five trends that have helped define 2011. So far we've covered online privacy, group messaging and HTML5. Today we're looking at a still emerging trend, but one which is (pardon the pun) very much worth watching: second screen apps. By that we mean apps that run on your smartphone or tablet device and complement your television viewing.

Over 2011, second screen apps have continued their push into the living room. Watching TV used to be a passive activity, but now the Web and devices like Android phones and the iPad have made it interactive.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the check-in may be greatly exaggerated. An argument that 2011 would be the demise of the check-in was put forward by Mark Watkins, the CEO of Goby in a post here last month. He contended that while some of the check-in services were seeing impressive growth in terms of the number of users, that the per user check-in rate was actually on the decline. Why bother checking in, he asked, contending that the only motivation to do so would be badges or self-branding.

Alex Iskold, the CEO and founder of the social entertainment network GetGlue says he read that story and the ensuing debate with interest - not just because GetGlue users do, indeed, check-in to the site. But because April was poised to be the biggest month for check-ins in the history of the company.

As of March, the social entertainment service GetGlue has passed the million user mark, a significant milestone for any startup. It now also boasts 100 million data points - likes, reviews, check-ins - representing connections between entertainment, people, and each other.

Those impressive numbers are an indication of the company's rapid growth since the introduction of its mobile check-in apps last summer. Indeed the million-user milestone is just one of several statistics that GetGlue can tout, all pointing to the fact that when people tune in to TV, movies, and sports events, they're also tuning in to their social networks - and specifically to GetGlue.

The social network GetGlue is rolling out its largest release of the year today, with a redesigned website and iPhone app. That redesign, particularly in the case of the website, will help make it easier for users to check-in to various entertainment events.

GetGlue is also adding a new category of content - the most requested one according to founder and CEO Alex Iskold. Users will now be able to check in to sporting events.

In addition, GetGlue is integrating with Foursquare, so that all these entertainment check-ins can be geo-located should users choose. This addition makes a lot of sense, because while a lot of the activities on GetGlue probably do happen at home - checking in to a book you're reading, for example, or to your favorite Tuesday night TV show - movies, concerts, and now sports are also events we actually attend, not just watch.

The 83rd Academy Awards were broadcast this evening. The stories that will wrap up the evening's awards, fashion, and festivities are sure to focus on the winners, on the dresses, on the really really really badly scripted banter.

But for those of us tuning in via Twitter, I'd say the show was a great success. It provided plenty of material for running commentary, historical insights, quips and quibbles. For the funniest original writing, for example, I'd give a nod to Roseanne Cash for her #JaneAustinattheOscars tweets.

All the tweets, not just those from celebrities and insiders, were vastly more entertaining than the show itself, and the reason I'd wager that a whole new crowd of curious onlookers are tuning in. It's not about watching the Oscars per se. It's about being able to participate in the online community that's watching the Oscars. It's no longer sufficient to wait for the water cooler, to invoke a tried morning-after cliche. It's about checking-in and chatting with others and sharing the broadcast together.

Every now and then a product comes along - either from a startup or as a project within a larger company - that seems to meet a worthy need but just doesn't find its legs. Sometimes great ideas are pushed on us too quickly, or are ahead of their time, and other products capitalize on this market months and years down the road. As senior associate Andrew Parker pointed out Wednesday on his blog The Gong Show, this is precisely what happened with the Q&A service boom we see flourishing today.