Social Studies

GetGlue: Platforms, Brand Ambassadors, and Puccini

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I’ve been writing lately on rating and suggestion services and their underlying data prediction technologies, which are fascinating.

What about those users (like me) who don’t completely trust the algorithmically generated suggestions that are proffered?

They can instead lose themselves in the stream of likes and comments that are displayed in the standard “recent activity” box found on the home pages of these sites. It’s a direct way to pick up ideas on movies, books, food, TV shows, and lizards.

I made up the part about lizards, but the point is that with social rating sites, anything in this world can be judged as good or bad and then become a part of the intimate information flow for the rest of humanity to see.

For example, GetGlue, the recommendation service I’ve been referring to in my posts, has an Android (and iPhone) app that lets the crowd comment on what they’re currently reading, watching, listening, or thinking. It’s really a check-in service—Foursquare without being tied to a specific physical place

With my new Yixin Android tablet now on my coffee table, I’ve become another gadget-owning media critic.

I’ve been referring to GetGlue as a recommendation service, but as I’ve learned, it’s really not the entire story. It turns out the suggestion part of what they do may just be besides the point. More central to their business model is that TV and cable networks will see value in the taste profiles of GetGlue’s subscribers, and gain access to frequent posters or, as they are called in the trade, “brand ambassadors.”

How can networks taken advantage of GetGlue’s platform? I refer you to their APIs, which lets developers add check-in capability to any web site. For example Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire could in theory add instant social media capabilities to their fan sites with the GetGlue toolkit.

GetGlue is a platform: a snippet of their APIs.

But in fact, for now, neither show has taken that route. (See Kumar Patal’s eye-opening Advertising Age article in the references below. ) Instead they’ve struck deals with GetGlue to offer badges and digital stickers directly through the GetGlue app.

Yes, I know. While I don’t have information on the financial arrangements between GetGlue and the networks, the grunt work of key clicking and comment writing is being done by us, the ambassadors from Brandistan who are paid with logos and other game mechanic trinkets.

Even lab rats get food pellets for pressing on the right lever. I suppose when Mad Men offers free martinis for loyal GetGlue users, I’ll begin to take this business model more seriously.

So there I was on Sunday afternoon with my Yixin Android tablet. With my favorite TV show (Globe Trekker) on later in the day,  I decided to utilize the listening check-in feature of GetGlue’s Android app. As a new opera fan, I’ve been captivated by Puccini’s La Boheme and was thrilled by the New York Metropolitan Opera’s 2010 production of this classic.

I was playing Act I on my MP3 player and wanted to let the world know about it. Thankfully, GetGlue has received permission from some music company to display art from a “Best of Puccini” album cover, thereby providing a “place” to check in to and meet other opera lovers.

Note to New York Metropolitan Opera: There are four or so other Puccini fans on GetGlue. And I suppose …

I wouldn’t mind earning a La Boheme logo as an opera brand ambassador.

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