Lost Remote: HBO’s New social TV Project - ‘Connect’

written by: Richard Kastelein

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Published on Sunday, 05 June 2011 10:46

Cory Bergman has written a detailed piece on HBO's latest venture into Social TV, called Connect,  over at our US-based compatriots' website Lost Remote, complete with screenshots and analysis.

HBO.com has launched a beta social TV experience called “Connect” that features some of the most beautiful social media visualizations on the web. The home page (below) displays a real-time visualization of conversations around HBO shows, measured by Bit.ly clicks and mapped to locations. Click a show and you can connect with its various social accounts.

Well worth a peek, head over and read Bergman! There's plenty more images and deeper insight at Lost Remote.

Sabrina Caluori, director of marketing and social media at HBO, said in an interview with eMarketer  (via friend of Appmarket.tv John Korodowsky who manages CBC Canada's digital programming foray in the digital realm). 

“Our social media strategy is really focused on amplifying the water cooler effect of our programming... we want to create additional buzz, use social to pour gasoline on word-of-mouth, and create a more engaged consumer, all in the service of tune-in.”

HBO is active on Facebook, with more than 30 million “likes” across its more than 40 pages, as well as on Twitter, GetGlue (a social check-in service) and YouTube.

Christina Warren at Mashable also gave some solid insight, as HBO revealed some deeper details when Caluori gave Mashable Connect attendees a sneak-peek at HBO Connect earlier this month.

The site is dedicated into five key sections:

1. The Pulse is the HBO Connect homepage which acts as a real-time hub for what HBO-related content is being shared and clicked on across the web.
2. The Feeds section is a customized Twitter listing from various programs, allowing users to browse streams, filter based on keywords, trending topics or related services and filter through specific users lists. The Feeds page also provides users with quick access to GetGlue checkins, official Facebook and Twitter status updates, and videos from the YouTube channel. Users that are logged in to HBO Connect via Twitter (Facebook is another login option) can create their own tweets, retweet the tweets of others or send replies, all from the website.
3. The Conversations section has the potential to be the most interesting element of the site. These conversations will allow fans to interact with the people who work on the HBO shows themselves — both actors and creative talent — in live Q&A sessions and live Twitter commentaries.
4. The Visualizers are interactive, dynamic visualizations of trending topics, keywords and hashtags. These topics can be moved around the screen. Users can hover over Twitter avatars to see their tweets on those topics.
5. The Connections component of HBO Connect is a quick offering of the various ways users can interact and connect with various programs, movies and series on HBO. This includes fast links to blogs, Facebook and Twitter pages, GetGlue checkins, YouTube pages and more.

Read more from Warren at Mashable here.