Dancing with the Stars (or DWTS, as the kids say) is one of the most social shows on television, and ABC.com has just rolled out a social discussion section in advance of the season premiere. “We want to galvanize the entire social media conversation around ‘Dancing With The Stars’ into one place on ABC.com,” explains Karin Gilford, SVP of Digital Media for ABC.
The second-screen experience combines Twitter, Facebook and native commenting on ABC.com, so the discussion doesn’t suffer from “empty room” disease. Users can register via their Facebook or Twitter accounts and optionally share their comments out their social streams. A “top” comments section is curated by site producers and can be automatically populated by a trending algorithm.
“In addition to the official Twitter and Facebook feeds, fans will be able to visit the site to see what other DWTS fans and insiders are saying across multiple platforms,” Gilford tells Lost Remote. “We will also be highlighting the conversations that are resonating with fans, trending on Twitter or are fun or different, which will make it easier for fans to find and dive into the topics they are most interested in.”
Users can also filter the social comments by 4 different hashtags and 16 official accounts from ABC talent and contestants. And you can share, like and respond to each comment inline — a nice touch.
To me, the most successful second-screen experiences are easy to use, socially-agnostic, multi-platform and have an exclusive “insider” element. ABC.com is off to a good start with a clean, simple interface, and we’ll see how the conversation goes when DWTS kicks off on September 19th.
