Posts Tagged ‘Entertainment’

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Mobile Monday – GetGlue HD

Monday, August 20th, 2012

This post is part of the weekly ‘Mobile Monday‘ series on news, ideas, and strategies in the world of mobile devices.

GetGlue just released a new version of their iPad app that embraces two huge trends: social TV and personalizing curation. The “Foursquare for entertainment” app is heading in a similar direction as Foursquare itself: de-emphasizing check-ins and shifting towards discovery. The new GetGlue iPad app, dubbed GetGlue HD, aims to become a personalized TV guide with bonus second-screen content.

A personalized guide

The new guide is a personalized list/calendar of shows, movies, and sports “you already like and watch.” The programs shown are based off of what you have already liked and checked in to, so even though check-ins aren’t the main focus of the app anymore, they will improve the personalization of your guide.

For primetime TV viewing, new episodes are emphasized over reruns. There are also notifications for season premieres and finales, and special events such as award shows. Over the weekend, the guide will show recommendations for movies in theaters. Sports fans can check schedules and stats for their favorite teams. An interesting addition is that it also recommends content from streaming services like Netflix and Amazon.

A second screen experience

I always enjoyed using the GetGlue discussion stream as a second screen while watching shows, but with the iPad update it goes so far beyond check-in comments. It pulls in content from other sites, such as Twitter, YouTube, and TV Fanatic. Content I’ve noticed so far has included tweets from a TV show’s official account, episode sneak peeks from YouTube, and episode reviews from TV Fanatic. This is all brought together into a single screen. For those who love socializing their television viewing, this eliminates the need to watch TV with 10 tabs open in their browser: one for looking at tweets about the show, one for the show’s GetGlue stream, etc.

My thoughts on the update

While I do like the look and feel of GetGlue HD, I think it focuses way too much on TV. The movie and sports recommendations are somewhat hidden behind an ‘Explore’ menu, while the guide on the app “home page” is solely TV listing. I do really like that you can choose your cable provider so that the channel something is playing on also shows up in the guide.

What really disappoints me is that you can’t check-in to books, music, games, or topics in GetGlue HD. It seems to me that they are taking away these options, since their website says that GetGlue HD is “Coming soon to iPhone, Android, and web.” There are already personalized TV guide apps, such as Boxfish and Zeebox. And there are other ways to check-in to entertainment, like Goodreads for books and Viggle for television.

To me, what made GetGlue so great was that it was a hub for all entertainment. I thought the next big step for GetGlue would be integration with apps like Hulu, Spotify, and Kindle. Most of these entertainment apps have options to ‘Share’ what you’re watching, listening to, or reading. I saw GetGlue as the Foursquare of entertainment, and similar to how you can share to Foursquare from apps like Instagram, I want to  be able to ‘Share to GetGlue.’ It looks like if that ever happens, it will only be from TV streaming apps.

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Even with time difference, U.S. viewers want Olympics live

Friday, August 10th, 2012

It all started when those 200 or so little globular torches were lit two weeks ago. It started even before the 2012 Summer Olympics’ Opening Ceremonies hit U.S. airwaves, by about 5 hours. Where much of the world saw the much anticipated, awe-inspiring event live, the U.S. saw it in tape delay. Americans didn’t seem to like that, and that’s when the criticism started.

With laptops, smartphones, and tablets, many Americans always have a computer at their fingertips. With so many options for following Olympics, broadcast exclusively by NBC and its multiple networks, live. Apparently NBC felt that with so many gadgets, Americans could surely occupy themselves with the endless number of apps, tweets, and instantaneous bulletins available, instead of live Olympics coverage.

Some have found that airing the Olympics in tape delay allows NBC to effectively choose its programming and to efficiently edit down any superfluous moments. It can build up to and really focus on the drama of the few Lochte-Phelps showdowns or the “Fierce Five” gymnastics squad’s gold medal-win or Misty and Keri’s “threepeat” of gold medals in beach volleyball (spoiler alert?). Imagine watching the drama of beach volleyball’s “Golden Girls” at 2:00 in the afternoon—in broad daylight. Not much excitement to be found there.

But many viewers have come up with their own solution for NBC: broadcast the Games live in the afternoon and again in primetime. Sure, viewership wouldn’t be as high in primetime, but the overall ratings would likely increase when one considers the viewership from both sessions, according to many. According to a Gallup poll, 7 of 10 of Americans who are watching the Olympics “a lot” want top televised events—that means the Lochte-Phelps showdowns, Gabby Douglas’s “golden” all-around night, and Misty and Keri’s “threepeat”—televised both live and on tape delay. Per Gallup’s analysis, “At the same time, higher-income and more-educated Americans are also the most likely to say they want both live and taped television coverage of the most popular events, suggesting these groups might watch even more Olympics — and more ads — if there were live coverage of the most popular events.”

After NBC’s choice to broadcast the first Lochte-Phelps showdown (400m IM) and Usain Bolt’s defense of his 100m gold, the hashtag “#NBCfail” really started to catch fire on Twitter. A parody account by the name @NBCDelayed has even arisen among the ashes, updating followers on legendary swimmer Mark Spitz’s 1972 Olympic feats, to name a few.

Clearly, Twitter followers are not remaining quiet about the controversy—perhaps stirring the pot yet further—but they’re not out of step with the millions of other Americans who want a live Olympics first and a taped one second. Nothing appears likely to change come this Sunday’s closing ceremonies—what with NBC maintaining an astounding average of 33.6 million viewers per night. Yet this should indicate desire for certain broadcast changes for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics.

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Phelps and Lochte take U.S. to top of social media podium

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

With the 2012 Summer Olympics in full swing (or swim), records of all kinds are being made. Of course, with American swimmers Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps, those records mean performance in the pool. But what about popularity on Twitter? Social media has dominated coverage of this Olympics unlike any other and we’re here to update you on just what kinds of records the U.S.’s top two swimmers are breaking—outside the pool.

Going into the 2012 London Olympics, Lochte earned the top spot with Twitter users’ comments. According to social analysis company Attensity, who produced a report analyzing social media and the 2012 Summer Olympics for the month of June 23-July23, Lochte and fellow swimmer Phelps were the most discussed Olympians. While Phelps generated more tweets, comments discussing Lochte had an astounding 99 percent positive feedback for the swimmer.

But with his feat on Tuesday, Phelps became the most decorated Olympian with 19 medals. He teamed up with Lochte, Connor Dwyer, and Ricky Berens in the 4 x 200m freestyle relay to win the gold medal. The American swimmer might not have blown up the Twitterverse, but he did earn congratulations from the network’s celebrities of all nationalities and occupations. Current U.S. President Barack Obama, fellow U.S. Olympic medalists Shaun White and Apolo Ohno, Australian swimming medalist Stephanie Rice, rapper Lil’ Wayne, and Brazilian soccer legend Pele all tweeted their congratulations to the most medaled Olympian. The Baltimore native also received praise from other athletes in the area, like Ravens WR Torrey Smith. Phelps, being the avid tweeter he is, responded with messages of “thanks” and the like.

One legend whose congratulations were absent from the Twitterverse was the very Olympian whose record Phelps surpassed. Soviet gymnast great Larisa Latynina, who dominated the Olympic gymnastic scene from 1956-1964 with 18 medals, isn’t on the social networking site. However, she has expressed her admiration for his feat. In an interview with Reuters, Latynina said that she is “very pleased” to see that a “talented Olympian” like Phelps has appeared to finally break her 48-year-old record. In fact, according to Yahoo! Sports, Latynina submitted a request to the IOC to present Phelps with his record-breaking 19th medal. She was, however, denied.

So, for now, Phelps can enjoy the celebrity praise and the gravity of his feat—that is before he begins his final Olympic swimming events. All in all, he could outpace Latynina in the medal count when the 2012 Olympics is all over with 22 medals.

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, July 31st, 2012

The Social Media Olympics

The 2012 Summer Olympics are finally underway, and social media is playing a big part in it. Whether that is a good thing or not can be debated. NBC is being continually criticized on social media for their coverage, most notably about their choice to tape delay events to show in prime time. In the age of social media, anyone on a computer can accidentally find out the results of an event before it has aired on NBC. For example, viewers were disappointed to see tweets about who appeared in the Opening Ceremony, ruining the surprise.

But athletes are also seeing the negative side of social media during the games. Multiple athletes have made headlines and gotten into hot water because of tweets. Two were even taken out of the games: Greek Olympian Voula Papachristou was banned from competing in the Olympics after posting a racial joke on Twitter last week, and Swiss soccer player Michel Morganella was banned after tweeting offensive remarks about South Korea after a loss to the country’s team.

The popularity of social media also makes it easier for viewers to talk to athletes, which can also have negative consequences. British diver Tom Daley received hateful tweets about his dead father after coming in fourth place. Tweets from the user continued and became more hateful, even threatening to drown Daley, and a 17-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of “malicious communication.”

“Cashtags” let you search for money talk on Twitter

Twitter has introduced a new symbol to join the ranks of the @reply and #hashtag: the $cashtag. A cashtag followed by a company’s stock symbol (for example, $FB or $GOOG) will turn into a clickable link to a search stream the same way a hashtag does. In the stream, you will be able to read tweets and conversations about a company’s finances and stocks. The announcement was made via a tweet Monday night.

While users seem welcoming to this new feature, not everyone is happy. The CEO of StockTwits claims that Twitter is ripping off one of his company’s innovations. In a blog post, StockTwits CEO Howard Lindzon claims that his company has been doing this for over four years. Not only that, but he states that as recently as a few months ago, Twitter told him via email that the company wasn’t interested in making its own cashtags.

Is Twitter beginning to cut out Instagram?

The days of finding friends from Twitter to follow on Instagram are over. Twitter has removed its follow graph data from the photo sharing app, although it seems some users who don’t have the latest update of the app may still be able to do so. This follows a similar move made earlier this month, when Twitter stopped partnering with LinkedIn to allow users to sync updates from the two sites. Twitter’s dropping of LinkedIn and Instagram could both be part of a larger plan, but there’s also talk that this could have something to do with Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram earlier this year.

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Twitter Tuesday – Weekly Wrap Up

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

This week’s Twitter Tuesday takes brands global!

#CannesLions

The esteemed Cannes Lions 59th International Festival of Creativity was held in Cannes, France last week.  The six day festival showcases the renowned Lion Awards, stylish networking events and seminars led by famous industry leaders. Intended to ignite inspiration and reward creativity excellence, the conference brings together over 11,000 advertising professionals from 90 countries. Among the ideal audience, the event hashtag made a valuable impression:

  • 11,000 Creative Professionals + #CannesLion Event Hashtag = 61 Million Impressions
  • 103,389  #CannesLion mentions
  • 17,232 tweets per day
  • 3,000 tweets per hour
  • 5,000 pictures were tweeted

Promoted Tweets Expanding to 50 Countries

The #CannesLion festival was the perfect platform to present the expansion of Twitter’s Promoted Products.  Brands have had overwhelming success increasing customer engagement with Promoted Tweet campaigns in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan that other countries are enthusiastic about the Promoted Products. Executives announced that Promoted Products would soon be available to advertisers in 50 countries. Key markets include Latin America, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.

At Twitter, our goal is to reach every person on the planet. We are also working to serve advertising needs around the world.  @TwitterAds

Promoted Tweets are ideal for brands that want to engage with customers in real-time.  They are not part of a separate advertising platform. The tweets are organic; they start as regular tweets, surface with appropriate search results and appear with relevant Trending Topics. Brands have the ability to pin Promoted Tweets on the top of their profile page or selected search results.

Marketers can measure click through rates in the form of “retweets” or “favorited tweets”.  Promoted Tweets are beneficial when building brands, running campaigns, launching a product or holding an event.  The immediate interaction is what keeps brands intrigued. Burberry had phenomenal success at a fashion show by tweeting pictures of the models before they entered the runway. H&M added #beckhamforhm to their Superbowl commercials. Procter and Gamble took advantage of a Daytona 500 crash and fire – Tide was used to clean up the wreck so they tweeted photos of the process and asked fans to think of captions. Burberry, H&M and Procter and Gamble were able to capture fans attention instantaneously and sustain interest by extending the conversation.

Twitter Launches 2nd Hashtag Page: twitter.com/#Euro2012

Twitter introduced the first Hashtag page earlier this month, twitter.com/#NASCAR. The objective of the Hashtag page is

Visit Twitter’s 2nd Official Hashtag Page here: twitter.com/#Euro2012to focus on content curation with a blend of set algorithms and manual editing. Twitter stated that fans would be able to tune into the “best and most relevant tweets from commentators, broadcasters, journalists, players, former players and others”. The #NASCAR page has been a success. Twitter opted to roll out the second Hashtag Page for EURO 2012, the European Championship for national football (or soccer) teams organized by the UEFA. Fans will be able to tune into the Hashtag Page this Friday for the first quarterfinal match between Germany and Greece.

Do you use Twitter for your small business? Would you consider using a Hashtag Page or Promoted Tweet for a product launch or event?

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Was The Prometheus Viral Campaign Successful?

Monday, June 11th, 2012

Prometheus launches into theatres after flying high on a landmark viral campaign

He’s gone from big-screen movie star to a fictitious android in a campaign commercial? Show me that again?

Indie star Michael Fassbender goes viral for Fox’s intense new Prometheus marketing campaign. Fassbender, who plays

the android David in Ridley Scott’s newest sci-fi epic, stares directly into the camera of this “advertisement” because David is ultimately a product of the fictitious Wayland Corporation, the chairman of which is played by Guy Pearce. Of course the trailer intends to generate reboot buzz and not robot buys. This ad was the first of many new advertising techniques employed by Fox to generate interest for the much-hyped film, especially in a viral way.

Guy Pearce, the chairman of the Wayland Corporation appeared in a “talk from the future” dated 2023, to be exact, in another character driven advertisement during TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) this past February.
As recently as May, a viral video of footage, as Magnet Stories suggests, not appearing in the film premiered. The video, entitled “Quiet Eye” and starring another Prometheus mainstay in Noomi Repace, featured a live chat with the film’s screenwriter Damon Lindelof via the hashtag #prometheuslive.At March’s Wondercon, a heavily frequented, annually held comic book and science fiction convention, the first full-length trailer of Prometheus was screened.  Attendees were not the only viewers, however, because the trailer was streamed through online juggernauts such as Facebook and Twitter, which helped it to generate three million views in the first day alone.

And for those U.S. diehards who could not wait for the U.S. premiere of the film, June 1st provided another virtual preview of the film. The red carpet UK premiere was streamed on Verizon’s FiOS Facebook page.

A slew of videos featuring various stars of the epic invaded conventions and conferences alike—all in an attempt to tease hopeful filmgoers with one-on-one glimpses of Prometheus’ many characters. Viewers got multiple shots, literally, of what was to come through viral mediums that suggest a different breed of film marketing. Fox, as Magnet Stories noted, took a page of its hugely successful Hunger Games campaign and produced original content that highlight, one at a time, certain characters of Scott’s film.
According to Yahoo! Movies, Prometheus, which opened in 3,396 theaters, garnered $50 million and earned second place behind Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. Boxofficeguru.com claims that this weekend, Prometheus’ opening weekend, was the biggest opening weekend for a R-rated movie in 2012.

What do you think? Did the intense marketing campaign and $130-million production tag pay off?
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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, June 5th, 2012

This weeks’ Twitter Tuesday has a theme: entertainment! It wasn’t even intentional, but the past week saw three great uses of social media, specifically Twitter, involving music, movies, and television. We hope you enjoy it!

Pepsi’s “Live for Now” offers exclusives to followers

Pepsi’s latest campaign, “Live for Now,” has a huge social component, bringing exclusive content and deals to those following the @pepsi Twitter account and the #LiveforNow hashtag.

Throughout the week, Pepsi will tweet about new music and upcoming music festivals using the hashtag. Each week, the account will also tweet out codes for free music credits through Amazon’s MP3 store.

But Pepsi will also be offering unique content on their enhanced brand page. Pepsi will be creating a weekly video series called “Live for Now Music” which will be based off of the top trending artists and music from throughout the week. Twitter’s Advertising Blog states that it’s the first time a partner will be using real-time data to develop original programming.

Lastly, Pepsi will be holding pop-up concerts throughout the summer with Twitter at the center of the action. The concerts will feature artists with large Twitter followings, will be first announced on Twitter, and streamed live on their brand page.

MTV introduces new Movie Awards category with Twitter-only voting

Last Sunday night the MTV Movie Awards aired, an award ceremony based on voting. Usually, voting for all the categories is conducted on MTV’s website. But this year, one category winner was decided completely based on tweets.

While going from category to category on the page for the awards, the Best Hero category had a landing page different from the rest.

Each nominee (Harry Potter from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Captain America from Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor from Thor, and Jenko from 21 Jump Street) was given their own voting hashtag.

The landing page also had the “MTV Tweet Tracker” keeping track of how many votes each nominee had. That way, voters could see if they needed to send out a few more tweets for their favorite hero. The winner of the golden popcorn trophy was Harry Potter.

Miss USA goes social

The MTV Movie Awards weren’t the only competition to get social on Sunday night. The Miss USA pageant doesn’t have a huge online component, but fans can vote for their favorite contestant and the winner automatically gets a spot in the semifinals. But even without voting via Twitter they have incorporated the social network in a large way.

Leading up to the competition, fans could submit questions for the interview portion of the competition via the hashtag #AskMissUSA. The producers will select one of the questions to  be one of the five questions asked to the five semifinalists during the interview portion of the competition. NBC will also show real-time tweets on the screen during the swimsuit and evening gown portions of the show.

That wraps up this week’s Twitter Tuesday! Did you tweet about the MTV Movie Awards or Miss USA? Are you following @pepsi for great music this summer? Let us know!

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, May 29th, 2012

MBTA transit officer caught napping on the job

Greg Adrien was on his way to a friend’s house via the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority) when he noticed an MBTA police office sound asleep on the job at the Mattapin T station. Since he worked in security himself and knows the importance of being completely alert while on the job, he felt that officials needed to know about the incident, and sent them a picture via Twitter. He didn’t necessarily want the officer to get fired, but wanted to stress that this sort of thing cannot happen.

As soon as officials saw the picture, they dispatched a supervisor to check on the officer. The officer, who has been on the job for 29 years, was awake when the supervisor arrived but did not deny dozing off. He will be facing disciplinary action.

Metta World Peace’s latest mistake

Yesterday was Memorial Day, although it took Lakers star Metta World Peace (aka Ron Artest) awhile to figure that out. Around 1pm ET yesterday, he tweeted “Happy Labor Day… Enjoy it.” He’s known for living in his own little world, so this tweet just added fuel to the fire. ‘Happy Labor Day’ became a national trending topic as the Twitterverse discussed his latest gaffe.

To make up for angering a lot of veterans and those who love veterans, he later deleted the tweet and sent several tweets apologizing and explaining his mistake. Some of the excuses were that he “was still sleep” because he “partied like three rockstars” the night before, and he mentions several times that he frequently gets holidays mixed up.

He must’ve realized those sort of tweets were not helping him redeem himself, so he also retweeted his followers’ tweets about what Memorial Day means to them, veterans’ personal memories from serving, and what it was like having loved ones overseas fighting in wars. He also invited people to call in to his podcast show to talk freely and openly about his mistake.

Jennifer Egan writes fiction for Twitter

Pulitzer Prize winning author Jennifer Egan is trying something new. Her latest short story for The New Yorker was specifically composed with Twitter in mind, in paragraphs of 140 characters or less. Egan explains on The New Yorker blog that she had “been wondering about how to write fiction whose structure would lend itself to serialization on Twitter. This is not a new idea, of course, but it’s a rich one—because of the intimacy of reaching people through their phones, and because of the odd poetry that can happen in a hundred and forty characters.”

The story, titled ‘Black Box,’ will be published on the @NYerFiction Twitter account tweet by tweet for in ten nightly installments from 8-9 p.m. ET. Only after the entire story has been tweeted will it appear in The New Yorker‘s Science Fiction Issue. Each installment will also be collated on the Page Turner blog.

Would you read a 8,500-word story tweet by tweet? Is this a cool idea?

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

Twitter implements ‘Do Not Track’ option for more privacy

At an Internet Week privacy panel last week, Federal Trade Commission’s Chief Technology Officer Ed Felton announced that Twitter now supports ‘Do Not Track’ (DNT). Twitter confirmed this through a tweet reading, “The Federal Trade Commission’s CTO, Ed Felten, just mentioned Twitter now supports Do Not Track. We applaud the FTC’s leadership on DNT.”

Enabling DNT allows users to “opt-out of cookies that collect personal information and any third-party cookies, including those used for advertising. The Do Not Track functionality will only work if a Web site agrees to acknowledge it.” By enabling DNT within Twitter, you are opting out of personalized suggestions, such as suggestions for accounts to follow and personalized advertisements.

A new page has been added in the Twitter Help Center to explain ‘Do Not Track’ and contains directions on how to enable it for most popular browsers. For new users signing up for Twitter, there will be a checkbox on the signup page that says “Tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits.” Existing users can change their privacy preferences in their account settings.

Pakistan blocks Twitter

The Pakistan government blocked Twitter on Sunday morning in response to Twitter refusing to remove tweets containing blasphemy against Islam. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the tweets were part of a contest to submit cartoons of Mohammad, and that many Muslims consider any depiction of the prophet blasphemous.

While the ban lasted for around 6-8 hours on Sunday, many remained tweeting. Shahzad Ahmad, head of an organization that monitors Internet freedom in Pakistan called Bytes for All, immediately set up a team of IT professionals to help people bypass the ban.

Twitter and ESPN want you to tweet them your #GameFace

A new partnership between ESPN and TV will create custom ad campaigns around major sporting events, starting with the NBA Finals. The campaign is called GameFace and asks fans to tweet pictures of their best “game face” using the hashtag #GameFace. It will be promoted on Twitter using the “Promoted Products” services, on-screen during ABC’s live broadcast of the NBA Finals, and on ESPN’s various properties.

The best tweeted pictures will be featured on television and on official Twitter accounts with large followings. After each game, analysts on ESPN’s “NBA Tonight” will show the best game faces of each game. Once the NBA Finals have ended, ESPN basketball analyst Jalen Rose, who has more than 600,000 followers, will tweet his favorite 5 pictures, and will then announce the winner on-air. The winner will get a tour of ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn.

Future plans for the partnership include campaigns around the World Series, Superbowl, and NASCAR Chase for the Cup.

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

Twitter rolls out new ‘Discover’ tab

Last Tuesday, Twitter announced on its blog that it would be improving the ‘Discover’ tab, a feature introduced with the ‘Let’s Fly’ version of Twitter in December. The tab presents trending topics, suggestions on who to follow, and recommends stories. An improved recommendation algorithm will give you even more personalized content and put that content in social context.

For each recommended story, you can click ‘View Tweets’ to actually see which people in your network tweeted about the article, and what they had to say. You can also reply, favorite, or retweet those tweets right from the tab, or tweet your own comments on the article. In addition to the Twitter.com website, the tab will also be improved on the mobile site and mobile apps, both of which have also received recent updates.

French Twitter users use code names to discuss election

In France, it is against the law to publish election results before 8 p.m. on election night (Sunday night). To circumvent this embargo, French Twitter users came up with code words to discuss the election under the #RadioLondres hashtag. Radio Londres was a BBC broadcast in WWII that used code words to communicate during Nazi occupation of France.

Several code names were used for each candidate. Incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy was referred to as Rolex or Hungarian Tokaji wine, while challenger François Hollande was nicknamed Gouda cheese or Flanby. The hashtag was also used in the first round of elections last month, but a lot of the code names for the candidates differed. Hollande won the election.

National Zoo live-tweets artificial insemination of panda

For the eighth time, the National Zoo attempted to produce another baby panda by artificial insemination of Mei Xiang on April 30. This time, instead of writing a press release, the entire procedure was live-tweeted by Dave Wildt, head of the Center for Species Survival at the zoo.

Using the zoo’s Twitter account and the hashtag #PandaAI, Wildt brought the experience to interested Twitter users. Tweets included pictures of the equipment used as well as the giant panda, details about the procedure, and facts about giant pandas.

They won’t know if the insemination took or not until the summer, but the zoo will continue to update everyone on Mei’s status via social media and a panda newsletter. If it worked, I can’t wait to see TwitPics of a little baby panda!

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