eROI Days Email Agency

A friend of mine, Michael Berkeley, is founder and CEO of a very cool startup called SplashCast Media that is making a huge impact in the online entertainment world – their recent success was with integrating with Hulu.com.  The two companies are innovating and creating a whole new experience of Social TV for re-runs of my favorite shows – 30 Rock, The Office, and others shown below.  Tech entrepreneurs have been espousing the advent of Interactive TV for 15 years, but Social TV is so much cooler – it feels like hundreds of your friends are watching the same TV show at the same time, commenting on it, IMing, and doing so in text, voice, or video comments.  Ah, innovation is a beautiful thing.  Remember how I wrote in an earlier blog post about December being The Month of Optimism.  Well, here it is.  Check out a snippet of their press release below.

SPLASHCAST AND HULU DELIVER PRIMETIME ONLINE TO SOCIAL NETWORKS

Entire Seasons of Hulu TV Shows Can Now Be Embedded and Viewed Socially in Facebook and MySpace.com

LOS ANGELES, CA & PORTLAND, OR (December 10, 2008) – As more TV viewers “cut the cable cord” and view their favorite shows online, Hulu.com, the popular online video service, is teaming with content syndication service SplashCast® to distribute primetime television on MySpace.com and Facebook. For the first time and for free, social network users will be able to embed and watch entire seasons of popular shows such as The Family Guy, The Office and 30 Rock on their MySpace.com and Facebook pages using SplashCast’s “social TV player” technology.  Whenever new episodes are available on Hulu.com, SplashCast automatically syndicates the content directly to a viewer’s social network pages. Viewers also have access to the entire network of premium channels after installing a single SplashCast player. Additionally, viewers will be able to meet and interact with other fans watching the same shows.

SplashCast is launching specific “social TV players” – branded, embeddable video players – for dozens of popular TV shows on Hulu, including:

The Office (NBC) click link to view player

Heroes (FOX)

Saturday Night Live (NBC)

The Simpsons (FOX)

Family Guy (FOX)

Battlestar Galactica (SCI FI)

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)

30 Rock (NBC)

Chuck (NBC)

Arrested Development (FOX)

House (FOX)

Bones (FOX)

Fringe (FOX)

Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles (FOX)

Nip/Tuck (FX)

Sons of Anarchy (FX)

G-4 (Comcast)

IGN (FOX Interactive)

First Hand (Fuel TV)

The continuously updated SplashCast players deliver high-quality streaming video and related content, and can be added to social networks, blogs, or other Web pages. The players also provide community features for interacting with other people, turning online television into a form of social media. Viewers can now watch their favorite shows, share the best episodes and clips from the current or past seasons with friends, discuss the latest plot twists with other fans, and even submit content, all from their social network pages.

The SplashCast player for the TV show The Office, for example, includes full episodes and clips from all five seasons of the show, as well as interviews with the show’s characters, producers, and more. Fans can even upload their own humorous photos and videos of office shenanigans for all to see, as well as view, rate and comment on photos and videos submitted by others.

Meanwhile, marketers can take advantage of the SplashCast prime-time network, reaching targeted audiences by sponsoring specific SplashCast social network players. Brands are thus able to reach highly engaged audiences in a smart, safe, and efficient way.