The 2012 Pivot Conference is just around the corner. The annual event has become a key event for brands wanting to increase their visibility. The monthly #Pivotconchats serve as popular social platforms for brands and individuals to interact with speakers and industry professionals during the one-hour chats. Arktan is powering the chat on the Pivotcon site at http://2012.pivotcon.com/chat/.

The September chat earlier this week was hosted by Kare Anderson, an award-winning former NBC and The Wall Street Journal reporter, and Co-Founder of Say It Better Center. The chat attracted 101 participants, who generated over 1,000 tweets. The topics included some in the minds of all brands and individuals wanting to cultivate a meaningful social media presence.

Here are some thoughts extracted from the sea of over 1,000 tweets, including few by Kare Anderson and Kred’s Andrew Grill.

Kare called “the elements of A.I.R.: Actionable + Interestingness + Relevance” among keys for building credibility in social media, along with consistently showing timely, unique expertise that matter most to one’s niche market. Andrew Grill advised people to be relevant and generous, with original thoughts. One’s ability to architect value, and to always seek to provide value, was also highlighted in the chat. The advice of one chat participant to “live, breathe, speak, and write with Integrity” resonated with many.

Honesty, transparency, authenticity, reciprocity, empathy and symbiosis were mentioned among key qualities for productive collaboration. While productive collaboration can have friction as well, a healthy disagreement is progress. Kare said that “productive collaborations [equal] deal reciprocity, complimentary audiences and shared vision”, adding that “productive collaboration requires the ability to hear the unsaid, and listening with the intention to connect”.

What then makes one a good brand ambassador? Here are some thoughts that emerged: Good brand ambassadors are passionate, enthusiastic, articulate, engaged, and educated about the brand. They are reliable, and deliver on their promises. They possess a strong sense of purpose, core values, and guiding principles. In the words of Andrew Grill: “The best Brand Ambassadors are 1) not celebrities 2) not paid 3) authentically love the product/service”.

Stay tuned for the next #Pivotconchat on October 2, featuring as a speaker Martin Nisenholtz, former Chief Digital Officer of The New York Times.

Live chat is emerging as a trend across many industries from sports to music to brands to TV networks. Leading examples from the Social TV industry include TNT’s live chat hubs for the network’s “Falling Skies” and “Dallas” shows, powered by Arktan SocialStreams.

TNT’s live chat experiences allow fans to participate in exclusive post-show native live chats with other fans. Fans can start participating after logging in using their preferred social login name. Facebook still remains by far as the most popular social login option chosen by 54% of the users according to data for Q1 2012 by Janrain, boasting a big jump from 42% in Q3 2011. Facebook reigns as the preferred social login also on mobile apps with 49% of the users.

The season finale of “Falling Skies” earlier this week had record numbers of fans signing in to participate in the post-show native chat on “2nd Watch”, the designated site for the “Falling Skies” live chat hosted by Wil Wheaton. After the show’s finale had aired on TV, “2nd Watch” featured a 30-minute live video of Wil Wheaton interviewing the cast of the show, among them Noah Wyle, Maxim Knight, Connor Jessup, and Sarah Carter, and the live chat taking place at the same time on the site.

The live chat page refreshes automatically showing new comments in real time, visually highlighting each new comment as they get posted by fans, without requiring refreshing of the page. During peaks tens of thousands of fans came to watch the live video and chat on “2nd Watch”. SocialStreams’ social sharing feature allows fans chatting on the site to share their comments with their friends on social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, driving virality back to “2nd Watch”. Facebook is the preferred social sharing site with close to 55% of the users.

Besides chatting on “2nd Watch” during post-show live chats, fans can also interact with other content around "Falling Skies" show on a different social hub. SocialStreams is powering this hub by extending real-time Social Web content and conversation there from Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue, Instagram, etc. The social sharing feature allows fans to share their posts made on the hub with their friends across various social networks.

Live chats are helping TNT build loyalty among the fans of the shows. The premium advertisers have taken notice of the large number of attentive fans at the sites during live chats, realizing the value of these live chat sites for advertising.

CTV, Canada’s largest private broadcaster, launched its “Social Screen” live chat for the "American Idol" in May 2012. CTV had previously used “Social Screen”, powered by Arktan, for other shows, including the Oscars.

CTV and TNT are examples of TV networks, who have been successful at engaging fans of their shows with designated live chat sites, building loyalty among fans. The trend is now gaining momentum across the Social TV industry, and beyond.

Arktan and PeopleBrowsr announced last week the integration of PeopleBrowsr's influence measuring tool, Kred, with Arktan SocialStreams. The integration gives Arktan customers an additional tool for filtering Social Web conversation and discussion around events based on influence, and highlighting comments and replies based on influence.

Arktan’s robust product portfolio continues to expand with Kred’s social curation tool now being the latest addition to it. Arktan SocialStreams is already powering social experiences for many leading brands in the Social TV and Social Music industries, and for an increasing number of Social Brands.

The Kred API extends the value of Arktan’s social curation platform by allowing customers to identify influential people talking about their products on the Social Web, and then featuring the influencers’ comments in real-time on customers’ websites, apps, and TV.

Arktan is very proud of its new partnership with PeopleBrowsr, and excited to have Kred as a new social curation tool in its product portfolio.

The Social TV Summit Los Angeles featured a day-long round of presentations and panel discussions. This blog highlights key trends that emerged from the session titled “White-Label Social TV Company Solutions - Technology Solutions That Drive the Social TV Industry”.

Arktan’s CEO and Co-Founder, Rahul Aggarwal, was the session keynote speaker and panel moderator. Panelists were Marc Scarpa, Executive Producer/Director, Simplynew, Jason Hoch, SVP of Digital, World Wrestling Entertainment, and Evan Silverman, SVP, Digital Media, A&E Networks.

Rahul gave an introduction of the industry, including examples of white-label Social TV solutions powered by Arktan, among them “The X Factor USA” show, the WWE website, USA Network’s “Character Chatter”, TNT’s “Falling Skies” Social Connect, and TNT’s “Falling Skies” and “Dallas” social chats.

Rahul highlighted some emerging trends in the space, such as social trending, social timeline, live chat for events and TV shows, curated social hubs, superstar pages, and loyalty and rewards. Many of these trends were front and center also in the panel discussion.

A&E’s Evan Silverman emphasized building branded sites around shows as a key to monetization, giving “Project Runway” as an example of a show powered by white-label Social TV solution. The show has been successful at increasing fan engagement and loyalty with rewards by giving cash awards to “Favorite Fans”, and allowing fans to select “Fan Favorites” among the designers in the show. L’Oreal Paris and Lexus are brand partners of the show.

Storytelling was a theme that surfaced time and again in the discussion as key driver of fan engagement.  Marc Scarpa explained how stories built around “The X Factor USA’s” contestants have increased the level of engagement among fans. The show’s sponsor, Pepsi, has further driven the social buzz with social apps built around the show, including “Pepsi Sound Off”.

“The X Factor USA” was the highest rated broadcast series in 2011. Marc attributed a major part of the show’s success to Arktan’s white-label Social TV product solution that is powering the second-screen fan conversation on the show’s site, and on the companion “Xtra Factor” iPad app. Marc said that Arktan’s technology has been unifying the conversation around the show across all platforms.

WWE’s Jason Hoch also talked about storytelling, and stories built around WWE’s “Superstars”, who are driving fan engagement by giving fans a feeling of being participants in the shows. Fans get a feeling that they are able to communicate with their favorite “Superstars”.

WWE has been very successful at keeping their fans engaged and entertained. Among some of the key metrics shared by Jason were 53% increase in pageviews from last year, average engagement time of 12 minutes on the WWE website, and 200% increase in traffic on WWE’s Facebook page.

This Social TV Summit session highlighted benefits and opportunities for monetization in the white-label Social TV solution space. The pioneering brands and TV networks in the panel are already enjoying the many benefits, and leading the way for others to follow.

Arktan’s flagship product SocialStreams has been enhanced to include the ability to curate real-time Social Web and Blog content based on language. The new language filtering feature is powered by Arktan’s recently developed and highly scalable natural language processing (NLP) framework. 

Our customers are using SocialStreams to extend curated real-time content and conversation from the Social Web to their sites, mobile apps, and TV, to build interactive experiences for users. Showtime is an example of a customer, who is using SocialStreams’ new natural language processing feature to curate relevant social content for their Social TV microsite called “Socialize”.

The new language curation product feature allows customers to use the Arktan Dashboard to filter a broad set of Social Web and Blog content based on language. These include tweets, Facebook posts,  GetGlue checkins, Tumblr blogs; Blogs and articles; and native comments and chat on brands’ own sites and apps.

Arktan has built heavily trained specialized classifiers for various languages. SocialStreams product uses these classifiers to allow customers to curate Social Web content based on language. The language filtering scales in real-time, similarly to the rest of Arktan’s filtering and curation capabilities, and covers most European languages, including English, Spanish, and French.