“Fox ran reruns of Fringe with Twitter integration so people watching the show could comment on the show in real-time.  The Twitter overlay took up 1/3 of the bottom portion of the screen and as would be expected, drew outrage from viewers.”

While Fringe has been a show that’s not afraid to use the latest innovative interactive marketing programs such as ARG’s, it did seem odd that a show built on the success of these types of innovative and alternate interactive marketing initiatives would receive the backlash it did.  However, it’s not the idea that’s the problem here but rather the execution.

As the screenshot above shows, Fox was going for a VH-1 Pop-Up Video Style Integration.  Big mistake.  Anybody who’s ever watched this show (which is basically X-Files 2.0) knows that you have to pay attention to keep up with the plot so any type of animated interruption in the form of oversized graphical tweets, is of course, going to hinder versus enhance the interactive viewing experience.

Fox should be commended for recognizing a trend with Social TV and trying it out with one of their most popular new shows.  However, Fox does need to revisit how they’re using Social TV with a program (and genre) like Fringe. I don’t think just reducing the size of the Twitter integration and focusing on Fringe trivia will help overall.  Nor will using viewer’s Twitter conversations that are just feeds pumped into and overlaid on the broadcast itself.

Fox should be using Twitter integration (ala Social TV) to provide sub-stories on the characters in Fringe and continue using alternative marketing methods that appeal to the core demographic.  Fringe is a unique show (like Lost and the upcoming Flash Forward) that has a built-in audience that is expecting to find and participate in alternative story lines, engaging puzzles and other enhanced content to create a richer, more satisfying interactive story driven experience.

Social TV has already been a huge hit on the web from Barack Obama’s Inauguration to a recent Jonas Brothers Online Concert on Facebook / UStream so it was only a matter of time until Social TV moved from the web to broadcast.  Social TV has already proven a success in other areas as well with theaters using MuVChat which encourages audience participation via SMS, so the overall idea of Social TV definitely works and is definitely a trend – 57% of internet users already surf the internet while watching TV.  Hopefully more networks give Social TV a shot to provide a more interactive viewing experience.

On a side note, I thought the Observer / MLB All-Star Game integration was great and showed how a subtle cross promotion can help spread awareness and build an audience for television series such as Fringe.

I am not a screaming teenage girl (i.e. the Jonas Brothers’ fan profile), but I WILL be checking out the Jonas Brothers + UStream event on Facebook tomorrow night at 5PM PST. This is the first time Facebook has really done something exciting and innovative in the music space, and if successful, MySpace might as well just kiss their community goodbye. So, what are those brothers doing tomorrow from 5-6PM? Well, it is going to be the premiere episode of a series of four live webcasts (May 7, 21, 28, and June 4) and they are planning to debut their latest song titled “Paranoid” live using Ustream! Remember UStream? Matt was the first to blog about it, and we are all convinced of its superiority in the interactive online video space…as is Ashton Kutcher and Punk’d.

Naturally, this live stream will be accompanied by live Facebook chatting (think Barack Obama inauguration), and I for one am very excited to see how smoothly all of this pans out.

The Jonas Brothers’ got themselves the best management and marketing team. They are managed by their dad and Johnny Wright, and marketing I assume is done by Hollywood Records, their label. Whoever these marketing gurus are, they are totally on top of their game – the brothers are present on every social media platform you can think of. They are on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, iLike, and bebo.They are also on Wikipedia, and have a comedy series on the Disney Channel.

Poor MySpace…the only thing they have had left is was their music community…