Sabrina Caluori, the director of marketing and social media at HBO, gave Mashable Connect attendees a sneak-peek at HBO Connect before this month. Along with the multi-platform HBO Go supplying, HBO Connect helps flesh out the cable network’s digital plans.
HBO has dabbled with social initiatives and outreach campaigns within the previous - such as promotions with checkin service GetGlue. But HBO Connect will be the best exhibiting in the network to date, with regards to aggregating content material and social possibilities for consumers all in 1 place.
The web site is committed into 5 essential sections:
Pulse
Feeds
Conversations
Visualizers
Connections
Pulse, Feeds and Visualizers
The HBO Connect homepage is the “Pulse” of the site. This page acts as being a real-time hub for what HBO-related content material is becoming shared and clicked on across the web.
The Feeds part is really a custom-made Twitter listing from various plans, permitting users to browse streams, filter according to key phrases, trending subjects or connected services and filter by way of certain users lists.
The Feeds web page also supplies users with fast access to GetGlue checkins, official Facebook and Twitter position updates, and movies through the YouTube channel. Customers which are logged in to HBO Connect through Twitter (Facebook is one more login option) can develop their very own tweets, retweet the tweets of others or send replies, all from the website.
Visualizers are interactive, dynamic visualizations of trending topics, key phrases and hashtags. These topics might be moved about the screen. Consumers can hover over Twitter avatars to find out their tweets on those subjects.
For True Blood believers, HBO is performing a special microsite TBwithdrawal.com, which displays tweets with hashtags such as #tbwithdrawal and #waitingsucks in real-time.
Conversations and Connections
The “Conversations” section has the potential to be the most fascinating component of the web site. These conversations will permit followers to interact together with the individuals who work about the HBO reveals on their own - each actors and creative expertise - in reside Q&A sessions and reside Twitter commentaries.
HBO already has a bunch of conversations planned for the summer time, which includes chats with Wendell Pierce from Treme, Thomas Jane from Hung, Janina Gavankar from True Blood and writers Jane Espenson (Game of Thrones) and documentarian Alexandra Pelosi.
What’s most compelling about these reside commentaries and Q&A sessions is that they will likely be timed alongside replays of popular programming and archived for re-watching. In other words, customers that want to catch up on a Twitter commentary with a costume designer or writer from their favorite show can do that alongside a rerun, instead of having to interrupt the flow with the show the first time it debuts.
At Mashable Connect, Sabrina Caluori explained that the inspiration for the Twitter commentaries came from Howard Stern. The self-proclaimed “king of all media” decided to reside tweet a commentary of the movie, Private Parts as it aired on HBO one Saturday afternoon, a concept the folks at HBO thought was a great idea.
The “Connections” component of HBO Connect is actually a fast supplying with the different ways users can interact and connect with a variety of plans, movies and series on HBO. This incorporates quickly links to blogs, Facebook and Twitter pages, GetGlue checkins, YouTube pages and far more.
Desktop to Start, Other Platforms within the Future
Right now, HBO Connect is really a desktop-only expertise. Caluori told us that the goal was to start the desktop version first, see what enthusiasts like, and then look at bringing one of the most popular and effective features to other platforms.
Still, we can’t help but notice that the website - built by RED Interactive Agency - is perfectly aligned using the greater HBO.com and HBO Go brands. The colors, iconography and user experience is consistent across all the HBO properties, which makes us hopeful that this expertise will come to the iPad and other platforms sooner rather than later.
It isn’t clear at this point if HBO is going permit the HBO Connect experience to sit atop HBO Go or if the two sites will remain separate experiences. We would like the have the choice - at some point - to use the two inside the same frame. Now that most HBO subscribers have accessibility to so considerably content material by means of the internet browser, being able to turn on the social layer at will may be a real defining feature.
HBO hopes that programs like HBO Connect will keep viewers engaged even when their favorite shows aren’t on the air. We think it’s a good start.
HBO Connect is still in beta and we expect the services and functions to evolve and improve more than time. Still, we have to say we’re impressed with the hard operate the network has put into the app. The social expertise and network connections feel natural. It’s a nice way to approach social without potentially irritating your viewers - viewers that in HBO’s case, pay a monthly subscription fee for the service.
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