This year’s Super Bowl was a “four screen” social TV event – and that includes its advertising. In an attempt to experience as much of it as possible, I was flipping between Twitter, Brand Bowl, and Facebook (Coke Polar Bears) on my laptop — my iPad was synchronized with the game via IntoNow — and I was juggling Shazam, Miso, and GetGlue on my iPhone. Yet still, I was just scratching the surface as I could have also been using PrePlay, Viggle and a whole host of other second screen apps.

As Stacey and I wrote in Social TV, the current experience of “social TV” is so fragmented right now that it can be quite exhausting (and distracting) in aggregate. In reality, most people will engage on one or two apps/devices at most which means to reach the social TV audience en masse, brands need to be in many places (screens and apps) at once – and hopefully connect the dots into an integrated, rich story across screens and apps.

Real-time Cross-Screen Storytelling
I was particularly engrossed in what Coke did. The brand’s infamous polar bears literally watched and reacted to the game in real-time. One bear was rooting for the Giants and the other, the Patriots. As events transpired on the primary TV screen, the bears would respond through a second screen Facebook app.

During game-play downtime, the bears would share backchannel tweets or posts from their own virtual “second screen” devices. When a Coca-Cola commercial came on, the events in the ad synched with the events online but from two different vantage points. It was a very smart, fun, engaging way to create an immersive, long-lasting brand interaction. And just begins to show what’s possible when the real-time web meets live TV.

I foresee a time when dynamic ad technology seamlessly integrates with social media as this is just the beginning of an exciting era of social TV. And it will become much more complex and fragmented before we start to see what kinds of experiences resonate the most with wider and larger audiences.

Mark Zuckerberg posted a picture of himself in front of his computer, and an eagle-eyed blogger noticed that his version of Facebook sports a larger-than-usual search box. An unintended leak or not, Facebook competing in search is only a matter of time just as, in retrospect, it was inevitable that Google would integrate social elements deeper into its main product.

This is why.
It wouldn't be a revelation to say that no large-scale ad delivery system is perfect.

Reason one is that, at any given moment, only a fraction of the exposed audience is actively on the market for the benefit that the advertised product delivers.  Yes, I actually might be interested in switching to your cell phone plan, but talk to me in 15 months when my contract is about to expire. This is the efficiency problem of advertising: in order to reach the few people who are interested right now, the delivery systems by necessity overshoot and spam the crap bejesus out of thousands who promptly tune out.

Reason two is that few would admit they believe advertising. People consider the source and recognize the nature of the claims as self-serving and discount them accordingly.  This is the effectiveness problem. The advertisers' typical recourse is to bypass rational thought altogether and to beat the claim into the audience's subconscious through incessant repetition.

(Now is a good time to note that we are are talking only about ad delivery here. Effectiveness of creative is a different topic.)

That's what the main media planning principles of "reach" and "frequency" are about -- solving for efficiency and effectiveness. In the picture above, this situation is illustrated by the undesirable lower-left quadrant that says "You Are Here." You are there because most of the existing large ad delivery systems are both inefficient and ineffective.

Except for two.

Google with all its imperfections is the most efficient way to deliver ads -- only people who need something now would actively look for something and see an ad for it.

And even though it took them awhile, Facebook is figuring out that they have this whole effectiveness thing down. According to many studies (the one below, and others, including my own), friends are the most trusted source of product information. Facebook has hundreds of millions of friends, and Facebook also sells advertising, and now Facebook is putting two and two together to make advertising that comes from friends.


But Google and Facebook each solve only half of the efficiency/effectiveness problem.  The impeccably timed search ads Google delivers are still self-serving. And the perfectly trustworthy social ads on Facebook still show up at the wrong time. In other words,  Facebook and Google each have what the other doesn't, and they are going to fight for it.

On Google's end, this is what the whole Search Plus Your World business is about -- fixing the source problem.  That's why the push to get people to +1 stuff, and then connect people into social graphs via Gmail and Google+, and then use +1ers as implicit endorsers. Not, you might notice, unlike Facebook.

And Facebook needs to fix its targeting. "Interests" have an expiry date and "likes" of pop-culture icons are only tangential indicators of predisposition towards, say, vacuum cleaners. Facebook does have several more precise mechanisms for intent targeting useful for certain categories (a recent change of status to "engaged" is a reliable signal for the wedding industry), but by and large nothing as precise of an intent indicator as search.

Hence the picture of Zuck in front of an extra-large search box.

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RevResponse, a company that helps bloggers make money by selling and giving away white papers and magazine subscriptions, has a new nifty tool that converts a blog's RSS feed into an email with automatically inserted promo offers.

RevResponse's aptly named RSS to Email Tool is a welcome addition to the pretty small group of  RSS converters. A field once teeming with start-ups, it is now the domain of a few email newsletter providers, notably MailChimp,  and Feedburner,  a once innovative product that has become stale after its sale to Google and the departure of Dick Costolo to the greener pastures of Twitter.

Like other similar tools out there, RSS to Email takes your most recent posts and packages them into a template of your choice. The templates come in a range of colors, and while they are not likely to win any beauty pageants the tool does come with a fairly flexible scheduling system that allows you to send digests of your brilliance either once a month, once a week, or on any combination of days of your choice.

Importantly -- and uniquely -- the tool adds rather unobtrusive ads for contextually chosen whitepapers or other publications right into your blogomail: either a set of text links or an ad with a thumbnail of the publication's cover. If you run a marketing blog, advertised publications could range from HubSpot's white papers and something called Chief Social Marketer to the awesomely esoteric niche B2B pubs such as Perishables Buyer and Archery Business.

On the heels of our Christopher Gorham announcement, we are honored to have award winning Executive Producer Tom Yellin as TVnext’s afternoon keynote speaker.

Tom is behind the acclaimed PBS four-part documentary series America In Primetime which, according to PBS, “focuses on character archetypes that have remained a staple of primetime through the generations – the Independent Woman, the Man of the House, the Misfit, and the Crusader – capturing both the continuity of the character, and the evolution.”

Watch Promo on PBS. See more from America in Primetime.

Tom is co-founder and President of The Documentary Group, where he has been executive producer of numerous films, including Babyland, China Inside Out, Operation Homecoming, and STEEP. The Documentary Group’s upcoming film projects include 10X10: The Girls Education Project, a feature-length film and social action campaign that embrace the enormous potential of girls in developing countries.

Before The Documentary Group, Tom spent many years as an executive producer at ABC News. In 1989, he created the award-winning Peter Jennings Reporting series, which produced documentaries such as From the Tobacco File:Untold Stories of Betrayal and Neglect, The Search for Jesus, How to Get Fat Without Really Trying, and The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy.

As president and executive producer of PJ Productions, he oversaw all productions since the company’s inception in 2003. Tom was also executive producer of ABC 2000, a 23-hour long millennium broadcast, the 12-hour series The Century, and the multi-part In Search of America. He created and was executive producer of Day One, a primetime ABC News magazine.

His programs have won numerous broadcast and journalism awards, including the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award, the George Foster Peabody Award, the News Emmy Award and the Polk Award.

We have limited tickets.
While last year’s event was invite-only, we’ve opened up a limited number of seats to the general public on a first-come/first served basis.

Online Ticketing for Hill Holliday’s TVnext 2012 powered by Eventbrite

See you on February 27!

With TVnext a mere 25 days away, we’re thrilled to announce Christopher Gorham as one of our featured keynote speakers.

Chris stars as blind CIA operative, Auggie Anderson, in USA Network’s hit original series COVERT AFFAIRS.

Over the last couple of years, he has been very engaged with a variety of social media platforms, including USA’s Character Chatter, Twitter and Facebook. Most recently, he was the first to tweet under Glamour magazine’s Twitter handle @glamourmag for the midseason return of Covert Affairs. During the recent midseason of the show, Gorham directed and produced Globe Tracker which highlights the international nature of the show through video and photos he shot on location. He engaged the show’s fans through the Covert Affairs Tweetcast: Mission Budapest, a six week interactive episode that unfolded over Twitter in real time.

Gorham is known for his starring role on ABC’s Ugly Betty as Betty’s accountant boyfriend, the endearing “Henry.” He then transitioned into the role of a cold-blooded serial killer in the Jon Turteltaub produced CBS Series Harper’s Island. Gorham adeptly turned leading man on the acclaimed action-adventure drama series Jake 2.0 where he starred as Jake Foley.  Gorham was also a series regular on the NBC comedy Out of Practice opposite Henry Winkler, Ty Burrell, Stockard Channing and Jennifer Tilly.  Additional series regular television credits include Medical Investigation, Odyssey 5 and Ryan Murphy’s Popular.

Most recently, Gorham starred alongside Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson and Terrence Howard in The Ledge which competed in the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  Gorham has completed starring roles in three other independent films last year; Answer This! with Arielle Kebbel and Chris Parnell, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend with Alyssa Milano, and Somebody’s Hero.

In addition to having Chris live and in-person at the event, TVnext will also feature pre-recorded messages from Piers Morgan and Carson Daly – AND we have a phenomenal lineup of television industry execs.

Tickets are going fast!
While last year’s event was invite-only, we’ve opened up a limited number of seats to the general public on a first-come/first served basis.

Online Ticketing for Hill Holliday’s TVnext 2012 powered by Eventbrite

Stay tuned for another keynote speaker announcement later today! Hope to see you at Boston’s ICA on February 27.

Simple. Except for the pre-roll.

Have you picked up your tickets to our TVnext summit? Our early bird discount ends tonight at 11pm (EST). We have over 25 speakers lined up for what will be a killer event celebrating the current and future of television.

Check out our TVnext panels:

• INTEGRATION
• INSIGHTS
• INTERACTION

Online Ticketing for Hill Holliday’s TVnext 2012 powered by Eventbrite

Hope to see you on Monday, February 27!

I am a bona fide creative mind with a balanced left/right brain.  I’ve gotten good at challenging (read: picking debates) with colleagues and friends.  One of which, about a year back, revolved around the merits and downfalls of the once popular and pre-Yahoo! acquisition bookmarking service, del.ico.us, and the need for it to evolve to the next level or just die off slowly.

At the core of my argument lay this: there lies a human need, no matter which side of the brain you fall, to adapt a visual context to the informational landscape you would attempt to organize. It’s crucial in defining a valuable and inherently usable service.  After all, we are in some way or form, visual beings. Tags and text just weren’t cutting it. I needed a quick visual symbol that summarized my bookmarking intent.  We needed a service that picked up where del.ico.us fell flat: one that would allow me to actually find my bookmarks easily, share them directly with my friends, and organize my interests in a cogent manner.

Six months later, along came Pinterest. I remember sending it out immediately.  “This, my friends, is exactly what I am talking about!”.

I’ll admit that my initial reaction was a bit overexcited.  Having used the site for months now, I’ve been able to temper my excitement a bit and ground myself with what it is NOW and align with where I hope it will evolve, but in the world of startups as we know: you test, learn, and adapt.  Pinterest has a long way to go, but man have they come a long way from tags and text.

So what exactly has Pinterest accomplished?

Well – they’ve been able to shift standard bookmarking into one that makes it simple to visually categorize the interests I find across the web.  More so, my “boards” speak volumes about who I am as an individual.  They enable my social identity to be broadcast by the things that I like, that represent me.  Even more so, it allows me and all others in my social network (Facebook and Twitter) to share these likes and interests amongst each other. As individuals – we tend to surround ourselves with like-minded people.  My friend pins something I think is awesome…then I pin it myself.  And so it goes.  It’s the power of influence.  An influence which has many times driven me to make purchases and recommendations to others whom I know share similar interests.

So as a marketer and an advertiser, I am innately thinking, “What Does this Mean for a Brand?”

Pinterest has come out strong in the lifestyle/home/food category.  This, by no surprise, skews more toward the female demographic. Of the almost 4 million users, there are nearly 1.5 million visits per day at an average of 14 minutes per visit.  This is impressive.  A recent article by econsultancy revealed some additional interesting stats:

• Users are largely women (80%) versus men (20%)
• Aged mainly between 25 and 44 (accounting for 55% of the group, 30% are 25-34, 25% are 35 – 44)
• Just 25% of users have a bachelors degree or higher
• The majority live off a household income of $25-75k

For brands right now, there’s a huge opportunity to not only integrate your product by folding visual content into the mix, but to really authenticate and highlight the personality that is your brand.  The largest and most obvious ones lie within retail.  Look a little deeper and you’ll see a much bigger opportunity here.

Here are 4 great opportunities for brands right now:

Inspiration Boards

Homegoods, Bergdof Goodman and West Elm are among a few that are adopting the platform through a good mix of integrated inspiration boards .  New clothing and product lines are a great entrance into the sharing tool but also allow your brand to stay on top of current trends and styles.  How would you as a brand use your own product?  Spark inspiration and trend yourself by showing your own products in fun ways.

Connect with Those who are Using Your Product or Brand

Chobani is a good example of this.  They’ve created a board titled “Chobaniac Creations” where consumers who have blogged our referenced their yogurt in a recipe are highlighted.  It’s a great way to connect with your consumer while providing a different use or value for your product.

Branded Challenges or Contests

Another way to connect with your consumers? Inspire user-generated content creation on how they use or interact with your brand/product.  Lands End recently ran a contest “Pin It to Win It” where users created a board of their own favorite Land End items. $250 gift card each to the 10 winners judged on creativity, composition & style expertise.  Pretty effective way to create brand advocates and broaden your social impression, right?

Looking Beyond Retail

There’s more than just opportunity for retail here.  NBC’s “Today Show” is there.  And so is The Travel Channel.  Both using boards to show behind the scenes footage, vacation ideas and images of relevant items that both resonate with their viewers but also humanize their own brand personas.

So Pinterest is the latest craze, and in an environment where new social channels erupt almost daily, it’s interesting to see how much traction they’ve gotten in such a short time.  For those brands that are early to adopt – there’s a wide open spot for you.  But I’d be hard pressed to think that with all the recent attention, that their plan wouldn’t include opening this up to bigger and broader uses in the coming year.

Not science fiction anymore, this: "Once chairs and other things become content, the prospect of rampant chair piracy turns from unimaginable into very real."  The Pirate Bay is opening a new category for the new kind of piratable stuff: "We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years."

In the world where all merchandise is either basic materials or data about how to arrange them, what is the role of brands?

There’s a lot of debate as to whether or not people today tune-in to TV spots. For over 70 years, the medium had no instant response mechanism we’ve all come to enjoy from the digital space. In the world of social TV, the game has changed – and TV, today, indeed has a measurable feedback loop.

At approximately 4pm (Eastern Time) yesterday, during the AFC championship game, Dr. Pepper ran its “Always One of a Kind” TV spot – ending with an #ImA hashtag:

While Dr. Pepper is certainly not the first brand to integrate Twitter into TV spots, their final art card gave quite a bit of prominence as a call-to-action to tweet. And at that very moment over 2000 people did just that, creating close to a million “social impressions.”

So we know that there’s tune in – and so much so that people are actually taking notice of the TV spot’s ending, many of whom go on to tweet. While a good portion of the Tweets are positive (people praising the brand for a great TV spot and wanting one of the t-shirts), the overall sentiment (as measured by Radian6) skewed negative (when excluding the majority of the tweets categorized as neutral).

Is this good or bad?
It all depends how it’s looked at. Now that TV has a feedback loop, brands are able to get instant feedback on their TV spots – and in this case, one might ask whether or not running a flash-mob like scene filled with “gleeful” singing and dancing during an intense football game would resonate. But suffice it to say there are TV shows where the praise for the hopeful message in Dr. Pepper’s TV spot would only be amplified.

Brands now have pretty easy access to television’s growing feedback loop – an instant unfiltered focus group. The question is what do they do with that data? What is the value of all of the social impressions being created?

We’ll be asking these very questions during TVnext’s “insights” panel on February 27, hearing from companies that include: Nielsen, Bluefin Labs, Trendrr, SocialGuide,TVGuide.com, and NBC. It’ll prove to be an interesting and contentious debate. Hope you can join us at TVnext.

About a month ago, Facebook began to roll out Timeline, which was touted to users as an “easy way to rediscover the things you shared.” This week, the second layer of this platform shift began to take shape, as some 60+ new social apps were introduced into the ecosystem.

These “frictionless sharing” apps, as they’re called, are designed to allow passive sharing of user actions as they are generated. Watch a movie, click a link, listen to a song, and it’s automatically shared to your timeline.

Sharing has become an assumed byproduct of whatever we are doing. We do it, therefore we must share it. No thought, no bother.

But there’s a cost to these Open Graph applications that is as imperceptible as the effort required to share through them. As the market literally becomes flooded with these passive sharing actions, what happens to their social value?

True influence and the power of shared content in the social space come from intent and selectivity. The value of any shared content (analog or digital) is in the sharer’s consideration of both the content and the receiving audience. In marketing terms, it’s all about the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

With this “new breed of social applications,” it seems entirely possible that Facebook may actually be devaluing the very activity that it is staking its future on. While the bold assumption that sharing volume will only increase over time could hold true, this view conveniently ignores the other side of the conversation. It forgets that with a flood of noise into an already noisy system, users are likely to retreat and begin ignoring as much data as they are producing.

Marketers will continue to chase the social share, but in doing so they can’t ignore the shifting value of users’ actions. Is it time then to consider moving our social investments to stronger, emerging markets, much as we would in the face of a non-social currency weakened by overproduction?

I took my first Kodak Photo Spot (wiki) pictures at my spring break trip to the Disney World in the mid-1990s, and through all these years I've never stopped admiring their genius. It's a marketing idea whose elegance has rarely been emulated. I love how organically spreadable the signs were, how they subtly nudged you to spend another scarce frame of  film, and how they made people's lives a little bit better by giving their memories just the right composition.

Of course today the Kodak Picture Spot is something that could probably be built straight into the digital camera wired to recognize the subject and to statistically analyze thousands of photos taken from the same spot to recommend the optimal composition and camera settings.


A Kodak photo spot, (K. Mikey M on Flickr / group)
Eastmanhouse.org:
"As photography became more engrossed in American culture in the early 20th century, The Eastman Kodak Company began to look for new ways to advertise photography and its cameras. With the rise of the automobile industry and the development of American highways, the company began a campaign called “Kodak Scenic Spots.” Starting in 1920, Kodak began to place signs throughout American highways that advertised both their name and the practice of photography by marking interesting and beautiful scenery. Initially, these signs appeared on the roads outside of Kodak’s hometown of Rochester, NY in order to test the effectiveness of the idea. Within a year, they began sending members of their advertising department across the country to select the most scenic views to be awarded signs. By 1939, Kodak had placed 6,000 scenic spot signs across the country. The exact phrases used in these signs changed over time. When the company began the campaign, the signs read: “Picture Ahead! Kodak as you go.” Eventually, the use of the work “Kodak” as a verb was stopped and the signs were changed to read: “Kodak Scenic Spot.” After the initial campaign ended in 1939, Kodak continued to place these signs sporadically in theme parks and tourist locations until the late 1980s. These signs also carried a new label, which read: “Kodak Picture Moment.”


Map of Kodak Picture Spots at Magic Kingdom (source)

An Iranian company Aaye Art Group ("designer and manufacturer of artistic and cultural goods") is making replicas of the American RQ-170 drone aircraft downed in Iran last month:  "Most of the toys, which come in several colors and are made of Iranian plastic, have already been snapped up by Iranian government organizations. [...] The firm is now making 2,000 of them a day. "  (Washington Post)

If you want to buy one but are affected by the embargo, you could pick up a similar one on eBay.

Ever dreamed of watching a video or a favorite TV show on the go?  Well, aren't you lucky:

Daily Mail: "Translucent TV: Lumus' PD-18-2 is a set of spectacles that can beam high-quality images directly into your eyes but allows the user to see through the images too." (This is Lumus.)

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The many uses for fine metal plaques are as varied as those who commission them. Whether they're intended for individual recognition, as a treasured memorial, or to identify a landmark or location, customized plaques make noteworthy markers.

Impact Signs creates metal plaques with distinction. Shapes of any style are available, and in most cases, turnaround is complete within eight business days; no extra fees apply. With exacting standards and superior services, Impact Signs is a leading source for metal plaques.

Abundant choices make it easy to create a unique and unforgettable plaque. After selecting the shape, material choices continue the design. Cast metals, such as aluminum or bronze, may be plain or textured in leatherette, pebble, smooth sand or stipple. Etched finishes offer a different, glossier look in brass, bronze, copper or stainless steel.

Several background color choices add to the appearance of metal casts, and specialty finishes lend an impressive air. Specialty finishes for cast bronze include oxidized options as well as colorful patinas, while both aluminum and bronze casts are available with a polished finish.

There are also numerous border and edge choices for cast plaques. Beveled edges, no borders, and single or double-line borders are available for both aluminum and bronze casts. Etched finishes come with either beveled edges or no border.

The finishing touches on a metal plaque are no less important than the plaque shape, materials and finishes. A variety of installation methods suit different materials and can create unique appearances, especially with the addition of rosette details to conceal or enhance the mounts. Additionally, both etched and cast plaques offer photo options that are truly exceptional.

In business since 1989, Impact Signs uses ecologically friendly practices, including recycled signage materials, solar technology and recycling of waste products. All work comes with a lifetime guarantee.

Television is at the center of an immense amount of innovation – rapidly changing the way in which consumers experience the 73 year-old medium and creating new and powerful opportunities for brands to reach and engage audiences across media channels, screens, and devices.

After the success of our 2011 TVnext summit, Hill Holliday is thrilled to announce TVnext 2012 taking place on Monday, February 27 at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Arts.

With over 25 industry luminaries, TVnext 2012 is a can’t miss event as we explore television’s future in a format fraught with case studies, demonstrations, rich debate, and insights. Speakers include:

• Mike Sheehan – Chief Executive Officer at Hill Holliday
• Lisa Hsia – Executive Vice President of Digital Media at Bravo
• Jesse Redniss – Senior Vice Present of Digital at USA Network
• J.P. Lespinasse – Director of Social Media at BET
• Tom Thai – Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Bluefin Labs
• Radha Subramanyam – SVP of Consumer Insights and Analytics at Nielsen
• Julie DeTraglia – SVP, Strategic Digital and Broadcast Marketing Research at NBC
• Christy Tanner – General Manager and EVP at TV Guide Digital
• Sean Casey – Founder & CEO at SocialGuide
• Claudio Marcus – EVP at Visible World
• Somrat Niyogi – Co-Founder & CEO at Miso
• Evan Krauss – EVP of Advertising at Shazam
• Kimber Myers – Director of Partnerships at GetGlue
• Seth Tapper – Founder & CEO at SecondScreen Networks
• Greg Rivera – Director at Microsoft/Xbox
• Mark Ghuneim – Founder & CEO at Trendrr
• Matt Leger – Director of Integrated Media at Comcast/Xfinity

And many more to be announced…

TVnext will also serve as the official book launch for Social TV, authored by our very own Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin.

There are limited public tickets available.
While last year’s event was exclusively invite-only, we are opening up a limited number of seats to the general public on a first-come/first served basis. Tickets are $299 before January 20, 2012 and $450 afterwards.

Event management for Hill Holliday’s TVnext 2012 powered by Eventbrite

Your ticket price includes access to the entire day’s events at the ICA along with  a light breakfast, lunch, post-event networking cocktail hour, and a copy of Social TV.

If you missed TVnext 2011 and want a taste of what this year’s summit will be like, check out our 2011 highlights video:

Press inquiries?
If you are a member of the press and have questions or would like to request an invitation, please contact us.

See you on February 27!

Clotaire Rapaille, the author of The Culture Code who was featured in the PBS documentary The Persuaders, is the inventor behind the patent for "Advertisement for Leather Clothing" granted in 2005. The patent references Rapaille's "imprinting sessions", "archetype discoveries" and the reptilian brain to conclude that "by emphasizing the transformative nature of leather clothing, it is possible to produce a useful, concrete and tangible result, namely, an effective advertisement for leather clothing. In particular it has been determined that such an advertisement can be made yet more effective when the transformations involved is from a person who is less sexual to a person who is more sexual."

In other words, show "before" and "after", with the "after" being  the sexier of the two.

Recently, I did the unthinkable. I methodically culled my list of Facebook friends, removing high-school classmates, old girlfriends and one-time acquaintances by the dozens. I didn’t hide them from my newsfeed; I didn’t move them into special lists. I deleted them. I deleted 168 of them.

And it felt fantastic.

Inspired by Path’s use of Dunbar’s number, I had “social media waste” on the mind and I reconsidered the networks I’d built around myself over the past several years. I, like so many other social media users, was quick to amass as many friends/followers/fans/connections as possible, across as many networks as possible.

The unfortunate side-effect of this social media arms race was that in the process, I had somehow reduced the value of any truly deep relationships that I had cultivated in a pre-Facebook world.

Mired in a sea of meaningless connections, I resolved to do more than segment my connections into circles and lists or manage them by fine-tuning hundreds of delicate privacy settings. The solution was simply to have fewer connections; I would increase the quality of my network by decreasing its quantity.

While it’s unclear whether or not Path and its 150 connection limit will take hold as a platform, the core concept is worth considering. You can’t have more connections, because you can’t have more connections. It’s psychologically and sociologically not possible to carry on this many “relationships” at one time.

Zuckerberg’s law – that we will continue to share more and more of our daily lives with others – may hold true in the end, but I believe we’ll begin to share in much tighter online circles than we have before. The volume of content we as users create and distribute is not slowing down, and the movement toward frictionless sharing in the social world means that controlling the composition and size of your social network is more important than ever.

In order for true meaning and value to return to the social space, networks need to shrink, not expand. Genuine engagement is not possible with thousands of people at one time, and in the coming year (and beyond) we will start to see a re-emphasis on quality over quantity, for both brands and individual users alike.

With less than two months before Social TV hits shelves (both physical and virtual), Stacey and I are amidst the final stages of the book’s production before it goes to print two weeks from tomorrow.

While you’ve already heard about Social TV from our perspective, here are 5 additional opinions about the book that will appear on Social TV’s back cover:

“We are at the beginning of social TV’s impact on the way audiences experience television and networks create, market and measure shows. If you are a TV executive, a content creator, or a brand marketer seeking to engage and understand your audience, Social TV is must read. Mike and Stacey share an essential roadmap to help you navigate the radically changing landscape of television as it blends with social media.”

— Chloe Sladden, Director of Content and Programming at Twitter

——————

“At the intersection of television, social media, and mobile lies a rapidly growing opportunity for brands to engage with their target audience in powerful and innovative ways. Mike and Stacey could not be more timely and relevant with Social TV as a guide for CMOs and other marketing professionals making their way through a new era of TV to differentiate their brands and drive sales.”

— John Costello, Chief Global Marketing and Innovation Officer, Dunkin’ Brands

——————

“This book captures a critical moment in time, when social TV exploded, changing the relationship between TV networks and their audiences forever. TV is no longer a one-way communication; it is a two-way experience for fans and celebrities to participate, share and grow the conversation around shows and brands as never before.”

— Lisa Hsia, Executive Vice President, Bravo Digital Media

——————

“In Social TV, the authors have taken on a task akin to documenting a hurricane while flying through it. And they have emerged with a book worth every page or ePage it takes up. This book not only documents TV’s past and its volatile present, it presents the many possible paths the industry could take. Whether you’re in the boardroom or the classroom, you won’t get a more complete and more compelling view of TV’s changing nature than this.”

— James McQuivey, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research

——————

“The intersection between TV and social media is changing the way we experience entertainment and advertising. Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin provide an invaluable, in-the-trenches look at this transformation. Read this and you’ll never look at your TV the same way again.”

— Todd Wasserman, Business Editor of Mashable

Stacey and I want to thank Chloe, John, Lisa, James, and Todd for taking the time to preview the book and provide their endorsement. You can pre-order Social TV at the best rates now.

This Minority Report scene with personalized billboards that recognize your retina get a lot of people excited and pointing towards the future, but it doesn't look like people in 2054 are paying any more attention to the smart billboards than they notice the dumb ones of today.