
Half of Pretty Little Liars season three is in the record books after Tuesday's summer finale. To hold over fans until the hit show returns Oct. 23, ABC Family has launched Pretty Dirty Secrets, an eight-part web series.
Meanwhile, this week's episode broke the record for most social media comments during a single TV episode, garnering 1.6 million on Twitter and Facebook (see infographic below). The episode -- "The Lady Killer" -- beat out American Idol's 2012 finale, which incited 1.4 million comments, according to data from Bluefin Labs.
Pretty Dirty Secrets will reveal a new character, Shana (played by Aerial Miranda), who is a Halloween store clerk. The web series star some PL… Continue reading...
More About: ABC Family, Entertainment, TV, abc, pretty little liars, social tv, web series 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/08/29/pretty-dirty-secrets-web-series-pretty-little-...
We recently uncovered some seriously shocking social media statistics – take this one for instance – it’s said that more than 600 million people who own a mobile phone don’t own a toothbrush. Crazy, right? Beyond ‘shock-value,’ these stats lead to targeted, insightful lessons that marketers can apply to their own business strategy. At their core, these statistics speak to the potential that social marketing holds. We’ll share 3 stats below and their implications for marketers. For even more stats and marketing implications, pick up our newest whitepaper, 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats (And What They Mean for Marketers). 1. Nielsen estimates that social media and blogs reach 80% of all active US Internet users (of which there are 245 million).
If you’re not there, you’re missing out on plenty of potential opportunities to increase brand awareness, identify prospects and strengthen relationships with existing customers. The vastness of that statistic indicates that if you aren’t on social media or actively blogging, your competitors probably are, forging relationships that could be yours. Leverage the Stat: 1. Locate your prospects: Perform a social audit to find out where your customers and prospects spend their time online. 2. Secure channels: If you haven’t already done so, secure your place on social media channels and start a blog. Fill out each profile completely to answer the basic questions your audience may have: who are you, what are you about and how can they contact you. 3. Develop a content strategy and content: What themes will you own? What non-promotional content will you share with your audience? Develop engaging, relevant content themes that support your brand. 2. One in every seven minutes spent online is spent on Facebook. A similar implication as stat #1: that’s a tremendous amount of time spent on Facebook. Other sources confirm the average Facebook visit is 20 minutes per user. The takeaway is clear: Facebook welcomes a large and engaged audience. For marketers, this represents a prime opportunity to share your message with visitors, possibly with more people per day than visit your own site. To properly capitalize on this opportunity, brands need to have a high EdgeRank, coupled with high quality content. For more on EdgeRank, check out our paper EdgeRank: Stop Worrying About It and Love Your Content. Leverage the Stat: 1. Post one to two times daily – The half-life of a Facebook post is 18 hours, so limit your posting to one to two times per day. More than that may actually decrease engagement. 2. Include media – Adding a photo and video to posts increases the life of content by 16% and 9% respectively. Always support posts with a photo (or a video, if possible). 3. Encourage sharing – Feature clear calls-to-action on your posts. If you want to expand your social reach, invite your followers to share the content with their friends. 3. 91% of experienced social marketers see improved website traffic due to social media campaigns and 79% are generating more quality leads. That’s the ideal scenario – social marketing as a driver of increased website traffic and leads. It may not happen overnight, but by investing in the proper resources and research, brands can improve and optimize their social marketing performance. Leverage the Stat: 1. Learn from the best: Study the leader in your industry and category. How are they leveraging social to drive growth? Analyze and apply best practices gleaned from studying the category leaders. (To get started, check out what top social brands like Whole Foods and Farmers Insurance are doing in our paper Social Success Stories: Marketing Lessons from Industry Leaders). 2. Join the conversation: Find discussions that are relevant to your brand and offerings. Publish content that will tap into their passions. Take it from the owner of Foiled Cupcakes, who recruited 94% of her clientele by making connections on Twitter. 3. Interact creatively with your fans and followers: Provide an incentive to sign up for an email newsletter or run a contest asking for photo submissions of customers using your product. Feature winners on your Facebook Cover Photo, website and/or Twitter background. Don’t forget to check out our newest whitepaper, 6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats (And What They Mean for Marketers) for even more amazing social marketing stats. Have any shocking social media statistics changed your marketing strategy? Will you apply the lessons learned in this post? Tell us at @awarenessinc.
from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/3-shocking-social-media-stats-that-will-amp-up-y...
 The Smart TV Alliance consisting of LG and TP Vision (Philips) is still hammering away at its dream of platform-independent Smart TV apps, and as IFA 2012 gets under way it has a few new announcements. After promising Japanese manufacturers would join back in June it has welcomed Toshiba to the fold, as well as other supporters like Qaulcomm, Mstar, Onigo and YuMe. At IFA 2012, LG is showing off the first apps built to the original SDK 1.0 spec built by Accuweather, Eurosport, online music channel Vilanoise and others. It's not stopping there however, as the SDK 2.0 we'd heard about is still due before 2012 is out, and has been built to take advantage of the new more powerful SoCs that companies like Qualcomm (the S4 family) and Mstar can provide to HDTV manufacturers. Continue reading LG's Smart TV alliance grows, promises first cross-platform HDTV apps in September Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD LG's Smart TV alliance grows, promises first cross-platform HDTV apps in September originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 23:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | LG Korea | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/28/lg-smart-tv-alliance-ifa-2012/
If you’re new to our social TV blog, welcome! This post is part of our weekly Top 10 Trending Ads series, which ranks brands according to how many tweets their commercials received in the last week. This week’s Top 10 Trending Ads chart has a bunch of familiar faces: Target is the reigning champ for the second week in a row, with its commercials garnering over 13K tweets – but Sun Drop is back and nipping at its heels! Foot Locker holds steady at #3, as its humorous campaign with NBA stars continues to air. Bluefin’s technology allows us to see exactly where and when a commercial airs. In Signals Brand Edition, we use color-coded visualizations to display ad campaigns over time. When you compare ad airings to social chatter in our platform, a fascinating view of the social TV world emerges – one that’s all about brands, instead of shows. I was curious to see how Sun Drop ad airings compare to those of Target and Foot Locker, so I did some investigating. Last week, Sun Drop aired 2 creatives 204 times. Target aired 3 creatives 418 times, and Foot Locker aired 10 creatives 442 times. So even with half as many airings, Sun Drop engaged consumers enough to tweet 12,573 times – almost twice as much as Foot Locker! What’s even more interesting is that Sun Drop has only aired 3 different creatives since June 1. You’d think consumers would get tired of seeing the same ads over and over again, and thus stop tweeting about them…but that hasn’t happened yet. This would seem to say that in social TV, quantity certainly isn’t everything – commercials must provoke the consumer to comment. 
from BostInno http://bostinno.com/channels/connecting-with-consumers-tv-ads-that-got-people...

Video parodies, lip-dubs, remixes and covers transformed catchy pop songs into the Internet's most-discussed viral sensations this year. To pay homage to this viral culture, MTV launched the Most-Share Worthy Video category Tuesday for the Sept. 6 Video Music Awards.
From now until showtime, people can vote in the category using Twitter hashtags and see what's winning in real time. MTV first introduced the Twitter voting functionality in May for the Movie Awards with a Best Hero category, which netted more than 800,000 votes.
Vying for the crown are Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe," Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know," Beyonce's "Countdown," Justin Bieber's "Boyfriend" and One D… Continue reading...
More About: Carly Rae Jepsen, Entertainment, Music, One Direction, Social Media, beyonce, celebrities, gotye, justin bieber, mtv, viral videos, vmas 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/08/28/mtv-vmas-most-share-worthy-video-gif-tool/?utm...

To kick off its 10th season this summer, Project Runway developed a highly visual, multi-pronged campaign designed to round up existing fans and get their friends involved.
The ongoing campaign, dubbed "#MakeItWork," riffs off an oft-delivered piece of advice from cast member Tim Gunn, who occupies the role of "mentor" to designers on the show. Since the show's premiere on July 11, Project Runway's Twitter following has jumped 12% to 130,000+, and its Facebook fanbase has grown by 6% to more than 1.5 million fans.
#MakeItWork extends across an impressive number of online and offline platforms, some large and established, others -- like Viddy and Piictu -- less so.
Here's a… Continue reading...
More About: A&E, Behind the Social Media Campaign Series, Entertainment, Marketing, Social Media, TV, features, lifetime, mashable, project runway 
from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/08/28/project-runway-make-it-work/?utm_source=feedbu...
Although it has only been a mainstream social network for a few short years, Twitter has formed a surprisingly tight and symbiotic relationship with the media, both because it is a kind of real-time newswire for information about events like the Arab Spring and the upcoming U.S. election, and also because it gives journalists an easy way to extend their personal brands into the social web. The company’s moves to lock down its network and control more of the content have raised some hackles in the journalism community, however, even as Twitter expands on its partnerships with select media entities such as NBC and MTV — and those stress points are only going to increase as the company’s ambitions and desire for revenue continue to grow.
A recent blog post from the Knight Center for Journalism at the University of Texas does a pretty good job of summarizing why some journalists and media executives might be uneasy about their relationship with Twitter and how they have come to rely on the network. Among other things, the post mentions the restrictions that the company recently announced on its API, which primarily affect third-party developers and apps — but could also wind up penalizing newspapers and other media outlets that have built their own features or services around Twitter using the same API. As the Knight Center post describes it:
“Recent changes to Twitter’s application programming interface (API) rattled some critics concerned about how journalists will use the popular social media platform to cover news in the future [and] beyond the recent API announcement, Twitter has seen a progression of censorship as the company matures that may threaten its credibility as a news source.”
Will media be treated the same as third-party apps?
One of the things that Twitter’s new API restrictions specifically prohibit (without special permission from the company) is mixing tweets from its network with content from other social networks or sources. But as University of British Columbia journalism professor and former BBC staffer Alfred Hermida notes in a recent post about the changes, these rules could also hit newspapers and other outlets that either generate their own curated feeds of content from Twitter and other sources, as the New York Times has done for the Republican National Convention and other events, or use tools such as ScribbleLive and Storify to do so.

So far, Twitter has said that Storify is safe from any repercussions due to the changes — despite the fact that the service (which was founded by former foreign correspondent Burt Herman) appears to be offering features that are frowned on by Twitter, according to the company’s somewhat confusing chart of good vs. bad apps. But given the way that the network has changed its modus operandi recently, by closing off external services such as Tumblr and Instagram and removing referrer links, it’s difficult to know how long that stay of execution might last for something like Storify. If a newspaper or media outlet has made that a key part of their journalistic process, they could be in for a rude awakening.
In a sense, media companies are suffering the same kind of angst that many developers and startups are feeling as Twitter evolves from being an open real-time information utility into a media entity driven by the need for advertising revenue to justify its market valuation. Just as those third-party services have built businesses on top of Twitter’s API because it was free, newspapers and other media outlets have come to rely on the network for the same reason — and could wind up regretting it in much the same way.
Twitter seems happy to have relationships with certain specific media entities, but for the most part they are television networks like NBC — which the company worked closely with during the recent Summer Olympics — and MTV, which is going to be making use of Twitter in a number of ways during its big Video Music Awards event later this month. Although many users seemed irritated by NBC’s delaying tactics during the Olympics, the head of Twitter’s media team, Chloe Sladden, told the New York Times that the network viewed the partnership as a huge success because it acted as “an amazing daytime teaser trailer driving people into prime time.”
Twitter wants to partner with some, compete with others
If you are a prominent media player such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, you can also get access to the “expanded tweets” or “Twitter cards” feature that the information network recently launched, which is the basis for much of its planned expansion. That allows more of your content to be shown inside a frame on the company’s website or inside its mobile apps — but as we’ve explained, this seems to be almost as much of a competitive move by Twitter as it does a helpful one for media companies, since Twitter is the one who gets the benefit of that content.
Meanwhile, as the Knight Center post noted, some media outlets are concerned about where Twitter’s desire to partner with TV networks and brands like NBC and MTV might take it, since the company was criticized fairly heavily for suspending the account of a British journalist who took potshots at its corporate partner during the Olympics. A Twitter spokesman said this was a misunderstanding related to the journalist’s posting of an NBC executive’s email address, but for many the incident was a critical breach of trust — and a sign that Twitter can and will control or even censor the content on its network as it sees fit.
And so, media outlets are left with a dilemma: Twitter is hugely useful in a whole variety of ways, and it has become a crucial part of much political and social news coverage. But at the same time, relying on a proprietary and increasingly competitive service for a key part of your business can be unwise, whether it’s Twitter or Facebook, and sooner or later media companies are going to have to confront that reality and figure out how to deal with it.
Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Mathias and Abysim


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/08/28/twitters-relationship-with-the-media-its-complic...
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line.  Spectrometers are a pretty invaluable piece of lab equipment. They make it rather simple to identify substances by analyzing the light that they absorb. Problem is, for the hobby scientist, they typically cost thousands of dollars. Jeffrey Yoo Warren's latest Kickstarter project aims to put these powerful tools in the hands of your average Joe, with an open-source DYI model, where the key ingredient is a shard of DVD-R. Using that piece of plastic in conjunction with black paper and a webcam, his $35 kit allows anyone to quickly and easily reveal the spectral fingerprint of any substance. There's even a $5 model that works in conjunction with a free Android app, turning your smartphone into a legit lab tool. The goal, ultimately, is to build up a library of substances that can easily be matched with samples caught in the wild -- in essence, to build a "Shazam for materials." The original inspiration was an effort to identify contaminants left behind by the BP oil spill, but Warren also touts its ability to reveal hidden dyes in laundry detergents and to differentiate wines or olive oils. For those with grander ambitions, a $300 pledge will score you a pre-built and calibrated desktop spectrometer, complete with pyrex dishes and a full spectrum lamp. To help fund this backyard (or back pocket) science revolution, hit up the source link. Continue reading Insert Coin: Public Lab DIY Spectrometer wants to be the 'Shazam of materials' Insert Coin: Public Lab DIY Spectrometer wants to be the 'Shazam of materials' originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Public Lab DIY Spectrometer (Kickstarter) | Email this | Comments
from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/28/insert-coin-public-lab-diy-spectrometer-wa...
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