Bravo to Bravo for Getting Social
First came fantasy baseball, then fantasy football, and now fantasy Top Chef? As a self-described foodie, I have been a fairly loyal viewer of Bravo’s reality cooking show, Top Chef, and eagerly anticipated Top Chef New York’s debut earlier this fall. During past seasons, I’d DVR episodes and watch them a few days later, and once I visited the Top Chef Web site to look up one of Lee Anne’s particularly enticing recipes. So from the perspective of Bravo’s ad sales team, I was a guaranteed set of eyeballs, but that’s about it.
For a while now, Bravo has done a really impressive job of trying to engage with its audience, and their social media strategy is light-years ahead of the major networks. Fantasy Top chef is just the latest element of a strategy that seemingly aims to use every social media avenue out there. If you’re a blog reader they’ve got blogs aplenty, from judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons, to favorite past contestants chiming in on the action, and even, in the spirit of cross-promotion, from “chef” Bethenny Frankel of The Real Housewives of New York. They even have a blog widget so that you can have all the blogs on your iGoogle page. Prefer Twitter? Then you can join the 740+ followers of season four’s Spike and Andrew @BravoTopChef. Mobile addicts can vote American Idol style on who they think should go home, or download mobile Top Chef games to play. And then there are the online games: Which Judge are You, Foodie IQ quiz, crossword puzzles and on and on. Essentially, if you’re looking to kill time, Bravo has a plethora of ways with which to do so.
Despite this massive effort to draw me to their site and make Top Chef a part of my daily foodie life, I’ve stuck to DVRing the episode and rarely visited the site. Until now. I have witnessned first hand the all-consuming power of fantasy games as my boyfriend likes to give me daily updates on the status of his various football and baseball teams. I’ve heard all about how unfair it is when a promising player blows a game, or, even worse, when you bench a mediocre player who then goes on to have the game of his life. And now I know what it feels like.
In Fantasy Top Chef, you accrue points based on the various actions of three chefs. The point rules are quirky at best, but leave a lot to consider as you pick your team. For example, if a chef “gets bleeped,” you lose one point, if he or she makes salad or scallops as main dish, that’s another minus one. If a chef wins a Quickfire Challenge (always a heavily sponsored event), that’s plus four. Although my Top Chef “team” is currently ranked, ahem, 5,313 overall, I am now infinitely more valuable to the Bravo Network and its advertisers. The new, finally-engaged me does the following:
1) I no longer DVR the episode, since Bravo emails me two separate emails the next morning telling me what happened and how it impacted my ranking. Although I could filter the emails, I still run the risk of finding out the winner elsewhere. For Bravo’s advertisers, this means that I can’t fast forward through TV commercials.
2) I visit the site weekly to update my team, where I’m exposed to a plethora of ads and sponsored games, and am much more likely to be sucked into their vast empire of Top Chef content.
3) I gave Bravo my personal email and home mailing address in order to become a “member” and play the game.
In the past I’ve made fun of the constant and pervasive product placement on Top Chef, i.e. “The Kenmore Kitchen,” or when Padma earnestly tells chefs to pack their meals in the “Glad Family of Products.” But, before I know it, the new me will be planning what they’re calling “bhive,” the national viewing party, and then uploading pictures of my party to their Web site. Bravo and their advertisers have finally, after much effort, got my undivided attention.
Social Gaming Communities Continue to Evolve
I Come From the Water…
The focus of video games always moves towards more collaborative play starting off with simple games for a single player, to two-player cooperative or competitive games, to 4 person party games like Mario Party or all-out brawls in Super Smash Brothers, and finally to online gaming communities of tight knit groups of friends.
Up until now these communities have centered on the few console game titles that enable multiplayer. For instance, an online community around Halo 2 multiplayer would form; another community would form around Half Life multiplayer, etc. Each network of players is only cognizant of the communities surrounding particular games they own, split up into virtual lifeboats or silos (pick your metaphor).
Who’s Gonna Drive you HOME…
Welcome to the new era of all-encompassing online communities based on the consoles themselves. The New Xbox Live Experience (NXE) and the newly released PlayStation 3 HOME turn the previous network-building model on its head by giving players an online presence first and foremost, then tying in the games and media each player owns. If games were like unconnected cities and towns before, these online platforms are like Grand Central Station on steroids, a central hub for comparing game achievements or rankings, playing free games, downloading free content, and meeting other players that might not even own the same games.
Xbox Live recently implemented a new layout including the addition of player avatars and a re-tooled party system. Now it’s easy to invite other gamers to join your party and romp from game to game seamlessly as one cohesive unit.
PS3 HOME provides players with a whole virtual world a la Second Life, although PS3 states the intent isn’t to compete with them. Gamers can create their own virtual spaces and invite friends or journey out into the virtual HOME world to meet other random players to build out their friends list.
One for you…
How do you turn online communities like this into increased revenue? Content creation is the name of the game, offering players extras they can purchase like demos to full game downloads like the Xbox Arcade, customizable layouts, extra multiplayer maps, music videos, free HD movie trailers, streaming Netflix accounts, episodes of TV shows like the Office and Scrubs, and even extra in-game content that players can purchase, download, and show off while destroying their less experienced online counterparts in one of the latest shoot-em up games.
Creating a platform-centric community also means players are more aware of the niche communities surrounding other games they don’t own, games their friends might have or, worse, games the rest of their party might have. Heaven forbid you’re the odd man out when your party wants to switch from Halo 3 to Gears of War 2 at a whim and you’re left in the dust without a copy to call your own. Xbox Live adds to the flame by showcasing community events centered on specific games like giving members the chance to play Rock Band 2 online with Tenacious D or join a cross-platform battle with Xbox and PC players in Lost Planet: Colonies. PS3’s new collaborative title LittleBigPlanet (one of the top 3 games in a new Networked Insights study based gamers’ interactions online) is almost exclusively based on user-created content and levels that players can download and either run through with a party or join in editing things together as they see fit.
These new twists on virtual communities may not have come early enough to bolster console sales of either the Xbox 360 or the PS3 against the Wii’s family-centric holiday onslaught, but both consoles are starting to see increased revenue from their burgeoning content download areas and game purchases. It won’t be long before players can record their games and upload them seamlessly to YouTube, tie their online profiles to Facebook, and text with fellow gamers about an upcoming jam session on Rock Band 2.
Mr. Tweet, At Your Service
This weekend, I noticed the New York Times’ Jenna Wortham’s Tweet about Mr.Tweet, a new service that claims to be ‘a personal Twitter assistant.’ It seems that while Twitter hasn’t yet figured out how to cash in on their user-base, others are trying to figure out what to make of this massive collection of talent, conversations, relationships and knowledge.
At first glance, Mr.Tweet seems like a service for people that already know what it means to have 10,000 followers. To me, PR folks like myself, as well as social media experts broadly encompass this category, as do innovators like Tim O’Reilly and Robert Scoble (who crashed Mr. Tweet’s site, just like he did Twitter’s).
The need for a service such as Mr.Tweet definitely makes sense. After all, most of us are still trying to navigate the site to figure out exactly how to make the best use of it. I often find myself browsing other people’s followers to see if there is anyone worth following. Having someone else do this for me and weed through irrelevant Twitter accounts based on my current network sounds like a pretty good deal, especially if the service is free.
Mashable certainly found the service useful. According to the post, Mr.Tweet sends you a DM (direct message) shortly after you start following him/it and sends you a two part report suggesting who you should be following based on what you’re Tweeting, as well as your current network.
I’ve also been checking out their blog, whose aim also seems to be helping people figure out what factors contribute to increasing their influence level, how to build relationships and how to differentiate who they should and shouldn’t be following. The site is only two weeks old, so I’m interested to see where it will go and what its business model is.
I haven’t gotten my DM with my report yet, but I imagine that Mr.Tweet is going to be a little confused. I follow three kinds of people: journalists, tech influences and food bloggers. Wonder what they’re going to come back to me with? I’ll keep you posted.
New York Times Online Gives Us Something Extra
Last week, The New York Times debuted Times Extra, an alternative view of the online homepage that showcases breaking news — from the papers’ competing news organizations. All registered readers can simply click a green button atop their screens to unlock the feature, which automatically shows articles related to the top headlines in a bright green boxes beneath the New York Times’ news.
There has been a bit of chatter that the Extra feature simply adds “unnecessary clutter” to the page, but I personally love it. The Grey Lady has long been my go-to source for news, supplemented by various other relevant sites. Their move to aggregated content on the site makes me even more likely to log onto the online site first, and will keep me coming back throughout the day.
In case you are curious, all the links come via Blogrunner, the buzz aggregator that the New York Times has owned since 2005 that has been responsible for publishing competing technology news on the site for quite some time.
As the future of newspapers comes into question, it is nice to see such a prominent player in the space make a bold move to change their online model. People who do not like Times Extra can simply click the “Switch Back” button to default to the standard home page.
The Internet is a Series of Tubes
Truly.
The recent retirement – after 40 years in the US Senate – of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens reminded me of perhaps the most famous remark of his career: “The internet is a series of tubes.”
While most people were quick to write off Senator Stevens’ comment as testament to the inability of doddering old fuddy-duddies to understand the technological advances we see as commonplace, Senator Stevens’ metaphor is far more apt than people give him credit.
The internet is a series of tubes. Great metaphor. Not just in an infrastructural sense but also in a deeper, metaphorical sense of which I only became aware recently while reading Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope,” a wonderful book written/compiled/fostered/nurtured by Zephyr Teachout that examines the role of the internet – and effectively social media – on the Howard Dean for president campaign.
The internet is a series of tubes for the very simple reason that it moves something from one place to another. In the case of the internet, what is being moved happens to be data and the carrier is distributing electric pulses. In this very primitive sense, the Senator was right on.
In a deeper sense, he is even more correct and his metaphor holds even more water (pun intended).
The internet is a series of tubes because it provides the infrastructure to connect two complementary but disparate things: haves and have-nots.
The example about which Teachout’s revelation came was in the case of a website being used to connect people in dire need of legal counsel with lawyers who wished to help needy members of the community.
Crowdsourcing is another great example of this. Many children dream of becoming astronauts. Unfortunately, most of these children become astro-nots and grow up to have everyday jobs like you and me (unless there are astronauts that read this blog about whom I am unaware). A crowdsourcing program at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Center provides a venue for us wannabe astronaut types to contribute to man’s understanding of the cosmos.
The enthusiastic people eager to contribute their time and energy to science was there. As was the need of scientists for enthusiastic, eager, and not necessarily PhD-posessing assistance. The internet provided the tubes or pipes to transmit the resources of an enthusiastic work force to the exact place those resources would be best taken advantage of.
This is why social media is such an amazing medium. Instead of being reliant on our geographic surroundings, the mass media, and those people with whom we come into direct contact for the appropriate tubes into which to channel our passions, we can go out and find them online – or create them ourselves.
Awareness is a great example of this, as are Facebook groups, VolunteerMatch and many other outlets.
Tubular.