Facebook announced this week that it will start rolling out hashtags on Facebook.

Facebook’s strategic move will pave the way for the company to have a bigger impact in the social web conversation, including around real-time events, such as TV shows and sports events.

All Arktan products have comprehensive support for curating Facebook content and conversation, including ability to search and curate content from Facebook.

Arktan customers can leverage these product capabilities to curate Facebook hashtag content, and build solutions around them. These solutions are similar to what brands are already building with Arktan products using Twitter and Instagram hashtags, including curated topics, events, and campaigns around TV shows, album launches, etc.

The long-term implications of Facebook hashtags remains to be seen, but it’ll serve as a big step towards surfacing public conversation on Facebook, and increasing engagement and interaction on the social web.

Arktan has introduced an industry-first personalized social curation feature set that allows viewers to further personalize their viewing experiences and social interaction by giving them the ability to select for viewing only content posted by their friends.

This highly anticipated feature set is already in use by Arktan customers, including Univision, who is using it on the UVideos social platform.

For example, viewers watching Univision’s “Il Gordo y La Flaca” show on UVideos can select for viewing all curated social content, Univision content, or only content about the show posted by their friends on Facebook or by people they follow on Twitter. When viewers use Facebook as their social login, they can view content posted by their friends on Facebook. If they used Twitter as the social login, they can view content posted by the people they follow on Twitter.  

The friends’ content includes comments made on-site as part of the second-screen or Social DVR based experience. It also includes tweets and Facebook posts.

The friend graph, used by Arktan for the new personalized curation feature set, is populated with users’ Facebook friends or the people they follow on Twitter. Customers can also populate a customized friend graph using Arktan APIs.

NCAA March Madness is underway, and here’s what Arktan is powering for the fans.

Arktan customer, TBS, has a designated page for March Madness on the “Men at Work” site. The page launched with a “bracket challenge” inviting fans of the “Men at Work” to join the cast of the show to compete with them for the winning bracket with a chance to win a trip to the Final Four in 2014.

Arktan is powering the site’s fan conversation by extending curated real-time tweets for fan interaction.

Another Arktan customer, CBS Local New York, has a Live Blog for March Madness powered by Arktan SocialStreams.

CBS bloggers post comments about the games on the site, and fans can start participating in the conversation after signing using their preferred social login, e.g., Twitter or Facebook. Fans can then start viewing and posting comments, and sharing them back on the social web.

Our customer, Univision, had a successful Latin Social TV Awards at the Social TV Summit in Miami.

Univision received awards in eight categories, including the Best Broadcast Network Latin Social TV Award. Univision’s digital network, UVideos, won two of the awards: The Best Online Video Latin Social TV Award, and the Best Mobile Phone, iPad or Tablet Latin Social TV Application Award.

Arktan is proud to be powering UVideos’ social platform, including its real-time social conversation, and the site’s many innovative, industry-first features. One such feature is UVideos’ time-syncing feature that supports the DVR capability for live and on-demand video playbacks of Univision shows.

When viewers watch videos of the shows after live programming, they are able to see all the social and on-site comments played back to them as they occurred during the original live programming of the shows.

Here’s a link to our recent blog post with more details about UVideos' award-winning social platform.

TNT launched last summer a remake of the hugely popular “Dallas” show that first aired in 1978. The original show was watched by a global audience over the many years it was on air.

TNT’s remake of “Dallas” is engaging both the old fans and a new generation of fans with a new cast that includes the next generation of Ewings. TNT has built a social media presence around the show and its characters on Twitter and Facebook to drive fan engagement. The show has a designated Facebook page, and all the cast members have their own Twitter accounts.

Fans can engage in second-screen social interaction around the show on TNT’s new social hub called “Southfork Social”.

Arktan SocialStreams is powering the site’s real-time social web content and conversation by extending curated content to the site from Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue, and other social networks.

Fans can start participating in the conversation by logging in with their preferred social login. They can post comments on the site, and reply to tweets and Facebook posts.

The site’s “Character Profiles” provides fans a place where to deepen their engagement around their favorite cast members.

“Character Profiles” is a place, where fans can learn more about the cast members. Fans can watch video introductions made by each cast member, see their current power rankings, and start following them on Twitter.

When fans click on the cast member profiles, they can view and start interacting with all the real-time social web conversation around the cast, powered by Arktan SocialStreams.