It’s always nice to see the New York Times seeing things as we see them.  Their Bits blog posted about the power of users’ pasts in the new Timeline.

“The premise of Facebook, of course, is that everyone’s past and present is so interesting that it deserves to live on the Internet — forever. Timeline elevates your opinions about everything.”

You can read the piece in its entirety here, and if you missed it, our detailed report here.

Want to know the latest in social news for entertainment, you say? We have it right here! This week we cover the latest in the battle between the TV streaming giants, The Amazing Race’s use of Foursquare and Warner Bros. brings to life a game from one of its most beloved TV shows.

The Amazing Race Uses Foursquare For Promotion

Here’s a social initiative that makes so much sense, we wonder why they never did it before! The Amazing Race, now in its 10^th season, has launched a Foursquare page where if users check in to a location, host Phil Keoghan will give information on where scenes from previous seasons were taped, along with travel tips, trivia and facts and unique video content. The page also offers users exclusive tips featured weekly from each episode’s eliminated contestants, such as their favorite locations from the race. Read more.

The Latest In The Streaming War

We have to admit, we like a bit of healthy competition and the TV and movie streaming battle between the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Hulu is no exception. Amazon has just signed a deal with Fox, giving users access to shows such as Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 24. Netflix has also stolen DreamWorks Animation from HBO cable for a reported multi-year deal worth $30 million per picture and including movies such as Shrek and Kung Fu Panda. But Amazon is moving in leaps and bounds, having doubled its content library since the launch of its streaming service in February and recently released the iPad-killer tablet, Kindle Fire. Stay tuned. Read more on Amazon. Read more on Netflix.

Big Bang Theory Brings To Life A Fictional Game

Warner Bros. has released a Facebook game modeled on a game featured on its sitcom The Big Bang Theory called Mystic Warlords of Ka’a. The game is a fake Pokemon-style card battle played by the characters in the show. The game sparked so much interest and discussion on social media that the network seized on the opportunity to use the game as an engagement tool. Users can play as characters from the show and challenge their friends. The Big Bang Theory premiered its fifth season last week and has garnered attention from the Emmy Awards with several nominations. Read more.

Miso Teams Up With Dexter

GetGlue TV check-in competitor, Miso is turning itself into a social TV platform, releasing an iPhone app to provide content relevant to the TV show a user is watching and launching this with Showtime Networks’ hit series Dexter. When a user checks into Dexter, they can enjoy trivia, real-time polls and alerts to when their friends also check in to the show delivered through push notifications. Read more.

How Social Media Has Saved SNL

Social media has gone from a required add-on to a critical element in the overall marketing strategies for many TV programs, not least of all long-running comedy skit show Saturday Night Live. Producers tweet about upcoming guests on the show before it airs and fans post their favorite skits on Facebook or YouTube which later turn viral through shares amongst friends. NBCU also highlighted social at its conference a few weeks ago, mentioning the importance of viewers who tweet during shows and the “multiplier” effect of Facebook and impressions on friends-of-friends. Read more. Read about the NBCU conference.

By Kate Collinson

The superstar of Facebook’s upcoming f8 conference will surely be the long-awaited and highly anticipated service, Facebook Music. This week, TechCrunch reported that the new service will feature two aspects. The first is “scrobbling”, where a song is automatically sent to a user’s profile when they listen to a song. The second is content resolution – despite Facebook pairing with several music streaming platforms (so far Rdio, MOG and Spotify), users will only need to be signed up to one to access most content, making Facebook the ultimate music unifier. There are also rumors that the player will have the functionality to stream in the background while a user browses Facebook uninterrupted. Stay tuned! Read More.

Bing Partners With The CW For Airtime

You may recall over the past year hearing your favorite TV characters utter some odd words: “I binged it”. That’s because Microsoft paid them, to target younger viewers. Now the CW, which boasts hit shows including Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl, is set to sign over airtime space the eager Google competitor. Promos will highlight “TV to Bing About” and Bing will occupy a lower-third three to four times during shows. The CW is even shooting 30 minute features where actors from the shows will discuss the top decisions during the show along with Bing, touted “the decision engine”.  Read More.

CBS Amps Up Live Social For Fall Premieres

CBS is launching its Fall shows alongside two weeks of “CBS Tweet Week”, encouraging stars and executive producers of shows such as Hawaii Five O, NCIS, Survivor and Criminal Minds to tweet to fans in a live chat after each show. The chat is hosted on CBS’ dot com but fans can log in from their Facebook or Twitter accounts via a dedicated link, submit questions and will be treated to exclusive insights into the upcoming season. The dot com will also host an online “Fall Premiere Show” dedicated to sneak peeks of the Fall lineups. Read More.

NBC Moves Quickly To Overcome Twitter Hack

NBC suffered a surprise Twitter hack over the weekend to its @NBCNews handle which claimed a new attack at Ground Zero. After an embarrassing twitter hack back in July when fake story tweets were left for 9 hours, NBC was quick this time to delete the tweets. The social media team tweeted from their personal accounts asserting that the tweets were fake and requested retweets from followers. Twitter responded by suspending @NBCNews and the hackers’ account, restoring NBC’s account after half an hour. Read More.

Entertainment Industry Starts To Integrate Tumblr

Tumblr, the fast growing micro-blogging platform popular in the fashion and creative scene has frown 183% over the past year to 11.8 million users – and the entertainment industry is noticing. One of the first TV shows to use the platform has been Anderson Cooper with his new daytime talk show “Anderson”, posting backstage behind-the-scenes photos, YouTube clips, tweets and stories about the development of the show. NBC’s TODAY has attracted a significant following on its Tumblr blog by posting funny images and captions, some not even news related at all. Read More.

New York — August 25, 2011 enter:new media, a digital media agency specializing in fashion, retail and entertainment, has announced that leading retailer Urban Outfitters is the first client to utilize enter:new media’s news feed magazine platform. The inaugural issue highlights favorite looks from the Urban Outfitters Early Fall Catalog and provides deep links directly into Urban Outfitters’ ecommerce website. Facebook users who have “Liked” Urban Outfitters will find the shoppable magazine in their own Facebook news feeds. It is available to everyone else on the retailer’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/urbanoutfitters.

“Marketers are actively looking for new ways to deliver value to their communities and new streams of value to their brands,” said Mark Curtis, president of enter:new media. “With fans spending more than twice as much time in their news feed than they do in applications, this tool enables a new, highly useful class of interactive Facebook content. We are proud to launch this application with Urban Outfitters, a clear leader in social media and online retail.”

Activated within the brand’s post in the Facebo
ok news feed, the magazine allows users to virtually “turn pages” of editorial content and deep link directly to product pages and additional content sources. The magazine platform is highly flexible and can be used to:

• Launch shoppable magazines.

• Deliver interactive catalogs.

• Promote traffic to highlighted content on your site.

• Integrate with other promotions such as contests and sweepstakes.
For more information about enter:new media’s retail marketing services, please contact Julia Zaborowski at 212-731-2033 or jz@enternewmedia.com.

About enter: new media

enter:new media (ENM) is a leading social media agency  focused on growing, activating and optimizing social media communities for entertainment, fashion, and retail brands. Unlike other agencies offering social media services, ENM was designed from the ground up to deliver end-to-end social media capabilities encompassing Strategy, Outreach, Content, Analytics, Marketing, and Media. ENM is an independent agency based in New York City. For more information, please visit: http://enternewmedia.com

About Urban Outfitters

Founded in 1970, Urban Outfitters operates more than 130 stores in the United States, Canada and Europe, all offering an eclectic mix of merchandise. We stock our stores with what we love, calling on our — and our customer’s — interest in contemporary art, music and fashion. From men’s & women’s apparel and accessories to items for the apartment, we offer a lifestyle-specific shopping experience for the educated, urban-minded individual in the 18 to 30 year-old range — both online and in our stores as well as through our catalog.

Zip It Up! You Can Now Target Your Facebook Advertsing By Zip Code

If you’re already tired of hearing about hyperlocal, start working on your tolerance strategies because it isn’t going anywhere.  In a move that will ad even more value to local businesses claiming their “Places”, Facebook has made zipcode available as a new ad targeting option.  Read more!

Ryan Seacrest Reanimated The Radio Star

Ryan Seacrest, the Sybil of entertainment (is he hosting American Idol? Is he on the E! red carpet? Is he producing a future hit reality series? Is he acting? Oh he’s all these things at once), has now added social check in dude to his list of personalities with his partnership with GetGlue. No small beans, either: It’s the first-ever radio partnership.  Read more!

Digital DUMBO Goes Loca For Local

Digital DUMBO has evolved from a boozy hipster media+tech networking event celebrating DUMBO as a digihood to a full spectrum boozy hipster tech networking education beta testing terrific two year old.  What’s so notable about their Thursday, August 25^th event is that out of the settled dust around Facebook Places, they’re focusing their guests on Google Places.  Invitees are challenged to rate and review as many NYC places as possible by the night before the event – and each “quality” review (AKA NOT “This place sucks!!”) gets guests closer to winning a Samsung Galaxy Tab.  Smart leverage of a digitally savvy community in a large city.  If you’re interested -  tickets remain on Eventbrite! http://digitaldumbo-estw.eventbrite.com/

Today Show: It’s A Sign Of The Times

When it comes to communicating social media options, the TODAY Show is pulling every punch possible – even taking the boxing ring style “round card” route to inform their Summer Concert Series go-ers. From Instagram to Storify to GetGlue, they’re not the only ones… Read more!

Heello! It’s No Human Ear On A Mouse, But It’s Still A Clone

Do you guys remember Plurk? Imagine Twitter, but with a really cluttered visual timeline. Have you heard of Heello? Imagine Twitter, but … well, imagine Twitter.  Heello is the cloned twin of Twitter (doppelganger?) birthed by Twitpic founder Noah Everett. So far, it seems like no one really knows what to make of it. Read more on Mashable!

Klout Bulks Up So YOU Carry More Weight

Here’s your chance to beef up your Klout score. The company that just recently celebrated its three-year anniversary has added Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, Last.fm and Tumblr to its scouring system. But the fun doesn’t stop there; Klout also plans to continue its growth and will be adding future services like Google+ in the future.  What does this mean for you? Don’t limit your social presence to Twitter and Facebook alone. Become an expert on multiple platforms and actively participate in a meaningful and appropriate way for your brand.  Read more and find out how Klout will calculate your influence with the new services: http://on.mash.to/oOEwYD

Stephen Colbert MLB Twitter Takeover

A marketing prank that blindsided a lot of die-hard MLB fans last Friday. Stephen Colbert took over the @mlb twitter handle after rising victoriously to MLB’s challenge of “Beat the Streak.” According to lostremote.com Colbert declared it “Toss Your Trash on the Field Day,” and even reported on a fantasy score between the “Shape Shifting Faeries” and the “The Enchanted Dragons” during his rein over the account. Our take away: Assume the risk in any situation. While MLB may have pissed off a few fans, the @mlb Twitter account did grow over 24,000 followers throughout the day. Read more here: http://bit.ly/nuQ07f

Woof! What a busy week! Not just for us, but for social media and the entertainment world. Here is our roundup:

Blink-182 Compiles Music Video From YouTube

Here’s some great crowd sourcing! Pop punk band Blink-182 has released their first single in eight years with an interesting twist – the music video is a compilation of YouTube clips from fans that violated copyright and used Blink-182’s popular single ‘What’s My Age Again?’. It’s called “The Blink-182 Film Festival You Didn’t Know You Entered” and is being sponsored by AT&T. There was also a ceremony where the band members gave out several awards including “Best Fan Parody Video That Almost Ended In Manslaughter” and “Most Appearances In A Public Restroom”. Read More.

Cowboys & Aliens’ Digital Campaign

Today is the nationwide release of “Cowboys & Aliens” starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, and its Facebook Page already boasts 230,000 fans and features a game with trivia and puzzles for fans to win official prizes. But what we really love is the film’s use of the relatively-new iPhone photo app, Hipstamatic. Users can download for free a “Cowboys & Aliens” HipstaPak which includes two new lenses and a camera case. The best photos capturing day-to-day good versus evil, as judged by director Jon Favreau, will win a grand prize of not one – but TWO iPads! Read More.

TVGuide Adds Social To Its “WatchList”

Keeping up with the social TV trend, TVGuide.com has released a new “Watchlist” which allows users to import their Liked shows from Facebook to personalize their guide. The guide also shows users their Facebook friends’ favorites and tweets from the official accounts of their favorite shows. TVGuide.com also features its own check-in service, which averages 20,000 check-ins per day. A widget on the homepage alerts the user when their favorite show is airing and allows them to browse through celebrity “Watchlists”. Read More.

Family Guy Is Crowned This Summer’s Most Social Show

Social TV tracker, SocialGuide has named comedy “Family Guy” as this summer’s most social show in terms of visitors and comments. The show had a 5.9% share in unique visitors for a all TV social activity and a total of 276,000 comments. A close second went to “SpongeBob Squarepants” and “VH1’s Basketball Wives” took third place. “Family Guy” has a massive fan base of 33.8m and regularly posts promos, tune-ins and merchandise products. Read more.

DJ’s Tweet Results In Hollywood Havoc

Ah, the unknown power of Twitter! DJ Kaskade thought he was being socially clever when he tweeted to his 92,000 plus followers about a free concert outside the Chinese Theatre in LA last week. But then it drew thousands of fans to Hollywood Boulevard and caused an almost-riot nightmare for the police and fire departments. To top it off, hundreds of users posted complaints to Kaskade’s Facebook Page about how their commutes had been delayed or tourist visits canceled. LA police are gathering evidence to determine whether or not they will press criminal or civil charges. Read more.

Imran Hassan is an expert in, well, pretty much everything, here at enter:new media. At our last workshop, he led a panel titled, “How To Target Facebook Ads For Engagement”. He had even more high level tips when we sat down for our debrief — including some great pointers about EdgeRank. Take a read, and be sure to join us at our next workshop, this Wednesday. RSVP here!

Caitlin: What is the value of Facebook Advertising?

Imran: Facebook advertising allows brands to tap into a user’s social graph to deliver a more personalized message based on each user’s social interactions. Facebook advertising should be designed to harness the power of the ‘social graph’ to build a community around a brand and mobilize them to drive ROI.

Effective Facebook advertising campaigns are developed, executed and optimized based on the key elements of EdgeRank – the underlying algorithm that determines how relevant content is served on the user’s newsfeed. In simple terms, Facebook ads need to be inherently social.

Caitlin: How is Facebook advertising different from other types of online advertising?

Imran: Other types of online advertising are equally important to a brand but they drive a different set of KPI; the underlying methodology is not based on a user’s social interaction. For example, Google Adwords and SEM in general are focused on targeting purchase intent based on keyword search. On the other hand, contextual advertising on publishing sites drives brand awareness by serving ads based on the content that is displayed to the user.

Caitlin: How does Facebook advertising target users with relevant ads?

Imran: The Facebook Ad platform offers brands many types of targeting capabilities starting with the most common ones such as age, gender, location to more advanced ones such as interests, educational background and whether someone has ‘Liked’ a brands page. However, the most powerful targeting option on the Facebook platform is the ability to target the ‘friends of current fans’.

Caitlin: Can you explain EdgeRank as it relates to Facebook Advertising?

Imran: EdgeRank is Facebook’s algorithm that determines the likelihood that relevant content will appear in a Facebook user’s newsfeed. For a deeper dive on EdgeRank, refer to our article: 6 Ways To Use Facebook Edgerank To Fade Into Oblivion

EdgeRank is most directly related to the new Sponsored Stories feature that was rolled out on the Facebook Ad platform. Sponsored Stores allows brands to tap into the current fan base. It is initiated when a fan engages with a brand’s page, application or place, which results in that engagement being promoted to the friends of that fan in the form of a Sponsored Story ad.

Users are more likely to notice actions taken by their friends. EdgeRank increase the likelihood that a user’s interaction on a brand page will be seen by their friends. Since the news feed updates frequently and is crowded with all kinds of stories screaming for attention, a user is more likely to see the story appear in a right-hand ad unit on Facebook.

 

“According to AdAge Digital, the Facebook audience responds better to consumer-initiated advertisement, as opposed to ones initiated by a brand. Their statistics shows a 143% boost in click-through rate, 217% higher Social CTR, 48% lower costs per conversion and a conversion rate 187% higher.”

Here is a fun enter:new media example: Using a combination of Sponsored Stories and friends of fan concept we were able to acquire close 100,000 new fans for Dog the Bounty Hunter page.

What you missed at the enter:new media 10×60 Facebook workshop – and why you should return, or join us for the first time, for the second half! You can RSVP to the event here: http://enm10x60.eventbrite.com/

On July 14, 2011, I presented with the super chill and sharp as a whip Rachel Katz on the topic of sentiment.  For this post, I sat down with Rachel and we talked about  it.  Hopefully, this will entice you back to the enter:new media office for round two!

Kelly:  So, what’s up with sentiment? Can I just let a robot crawl comments and mark stuff as positive and negative?

Rachel: Well, you could do that, but you’d fail.  Sure, tools are great, but they still need human calibration.  It’s the skin carriers that fine tune and make the tools really valuable.  It’s the difference between “Go to hell” and “hell yeah.” The best tools claim to be 60-80% accurate, and I’m not sure that level of accuracy flies anywhere.  Certainly not with pregnancy/paternity tests, but imagine providing 60-80% accuracy to advise on major business or programming decisions? So until we teach machines to recognize intonation and sarcasm, humans will still be necessary.

Kelly: Ok great, so you have your sentiment, then you head on back to your client, say a major television network, and you tell them “Hey, the fans don’t like Chauncey McCracken, so change your programming,” right?

Rachel: Oh Kelly, come now, it’s not that cut and dry.  What human sentiment coding, which we do at enter:new media, allows for is not only more accurate results, but the ability to go deeper. Coders don’t just mark the sentiment of a post; they mark the “drivers” which cause that sentiment. This allows us to tell a real story about what is being said, backed by reliable numbers.  It’s interesting for a company to learn that fans don’t like Chauncey McCracken, but it’s even more interesting to know why.

[Rachel turned the tables on me here, and asked the following…]

Rachel: What about you? Do you have any secrets for turning really negative sentiment completely around?

Kelly: Sometimes, it’s the age old trick of diverting attention with something sparkly and wonderful – and appealing to every fan’s desire to be recognized as the super fan.  We had one client who had a major programming change, one that the fans REALLY noticed.  It turns out this community had a few show-themed birthday cakes in the fan photo album.  I shared the, no joke, amazing cake, thanked the fan and kept the tone super positive.  Suddenly, the photo album started filling up with these cakes.  Everyone wanted to be highlighted.  Immediately, the programming change was forgotten, everyone was happy, and it was about applauding the creative awesomeness of the community. I’m a community building dork, and it was really cool to see how excited the fans got, and those cakes made me smile for weeks.

Catch Round Two of our 10×60 Workshop on August 3, 2011!  RSVP today: http://enm10x60.eventbrite.com/

Rachel sharing all her knowledge.

Photo and post by Kelly Samardak

Tired of being so popular on Facebook? Thought so. Here is how you can use the principles of Facebook’s Edgerank to go back to being a social media unknown.

What is Edgerank?
It’s the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine who sees your posts and how much.  Think of an “edge” as the activity on your post (comments, tags, likes etc).

Key Principles of Edgerank
-Affinity (the more interaction you have with your fans, the more they will see your content)
-Weight (posts with lots of edges will get seen more)
-Time decay (new stuff will be ranked higher than old stuff)

How To Ensure Your Facebook Page Stops Growing and Starts Sucking
Now for the fun part. Let’s destroy all that pesky Facebook popularity.

1. Text, please (Photos & Videos Are Too Much Work)
Photos & Videos are actually “edge” magnets. Stay away from these nasty attachments.

2. If Don’t Have Something Important To Say, Don’t Say Anything (Take A Break!)
Who wants to write status updates everyday? Take a month off. You deserve it. Plus, very few people will see your posts when you come back. Score!

3. Stay Focused On Your Promotions, Not The Audience (No Questions Please)
There is a reason people became fans of yours…you. They want you to talk about yourself ALL THE TIME. Never ask them open ended questions. That would only encourage interactions, and then more people will see your content and then – right back to being popular again. Foiled!

4. Don’t Be Bogged Down With Stats (Numbers Are Boring)
Last thing you want to do is use actual numbers to find out what is working (so you can do more of it) and what isn’t (so you can do less of it). After all, this isn’t MATH media, it’s SOCIAL media.

5. Ignore Competitors (Gentlemen Don’t Read Each Others Mail)
It’s not polite to watch what your competitors are doing to reverse engineer best practices. Plus, they suck anyway. Who cares what they do?

6. Never Take Chances (Leave Experiments To Scientists)
Social media is fun, but it’s not for trying out new things. Don’t go chasing waterfalls with new ideas about posting frequency, or new ways to engage your audience, just to see if they work. Didn’t TLC teach us anything?

-Mark Curtis, President

This week we are interviewing the panelists from the last workshop to get their one-on-one perspectives. Today we interviewed Hayley Rose.

Hayley is an expert on using video on Facebook. At our last enter:new media 10×60 Workshop, she gave excellent advice and provided insight for those people who were maybe a little intimidated by the prospect of launching a 360 video campaign. Here are some of her most recent thoughts on the matter:

Caitlin: What do you think is particularly powerful about a video campaign?

Hayley: I think the use of video allows a brand to create a narrative around a collection or promotion that is not possible via imagery alone. With video, you are able to create a story centered around your brand or product. In doing this, you are creating the means for greater engagement, as well as creating a medium which is more likely to be shared between friends, as the content is generally more compelling than a single image alone.

Hayley: Not all videos have to be executed on a grand scale. The beauty of social media is that you are able to create many different types of videos, no matter what your budget. My advice would be to sit down and define the key objectives of the video (ie. launch a new collection). From there, map out the story line, keeping in mind the product you want to feature as well as the channels in which you want to promote it.

Hayley: This is really dependent on the brand and the channels they have in place. However, generally speaking, the aim of the video is to make your message viral. Therefore, the key is to provide an incentive for people to share it with their friends – whether it be around a contest, discount, or exclusive access to a product, giving people an incentive to make it viral should always be factored into a promotional campaign.

Hayley: I have to say, I love the simplicity of the Burger King Chicken video. This is a prime example of a simple, low budget video succeeding in engaging viewers as you are able to actively participate in the video. Also, they succeed in creating a “wow” factor, not by expensive stunts or celebrities, but smart programming!

Check out that smile on Hayley Rose!

Photo by Kelly Samardak

-Caitlin Abber, Pr Manager