Is Wetpaint trying to be the Nielsen Ratings of social media? That's what I was left wondering after the Seattle company -- a platform of more than 1.5 million Web sites-- unveiled the TV Fandex today.
The service is designed to create a dynamic ranking of the most popular TV shows -- not based on viewership like the traditional measurement companies have offered in the past -- but rather on the chatter occurring on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and the Wetpaint fansites.
The company writes: "The TV Fandex is calibrated to measure both the online footprint of popular shows with a large established fan base, as well as the velocity of emerging TV shows as they generate early online buzz."
Right now, True Blood, NCIS and House M.D sit atop the TV Fandex.
It's a interesting maneuver for the heavily-funded company (It raised $25 million 13 months ago), possibly signaling that it wants to move even deeper into the analysis of social media.
That's a hot area right now, with companies such as BuzzMetrics, Visible Technologies and Meteor all working on ways to better track what is said online.
Wetpaint also has aggressively targeted the entertainment niche in recent months -- an arena where Seattle startup BuddyTV also operates. TV fansites were the number one category on the Wetpaint network last year, and the company now devotes a significant portion of its home page to promoting TV fansites for shows like Weeds and Merlin.
In April, Wetpaint inked a deal to power some of the fansites for MSN Entertainment.
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