TVloop Blog

Friends is the first TV show to eclipse the one million mark on on the TVLoop community which comprises the top 5 social networks and the TVLoop.com destination website.  The total number of friends fans is 1,019,581 to be exact which put it #1 in the community with The Simpsons following a close second with 956,093 total fans.

So why is that interesting enough for a blog post?  Well first, being the first to do anything is pretty cool and one million is a very large number.  And second, this demonstrates the power of the social media medium that we have embraced to give fans access to their favorite TV content.  Friends has been off the air since May of 2004, yet consumers continue to create and consume content involving the show at a rapid pace.  For instance, here’s a quick run-down on the stats we have for Friends on the TVLoop community:

• 3,325 photos
• 4,077 quotes
• 20,516 trivia questions
• 549 quizzes

All of that content is competely user generated which demonstrates how active Friends fans are even thought the show has been gone for four years.  And just recently, we announced that Joost videos have been added to the TVLoop community which further enhances the user experience with Friends videos and full episodes.

The net take-away here is that social media allows consumers to embrace the content they want, when and where they want it.  A TV show doesn’t end just because it goes off the air as old fans and new fans continue to embrace the content well after the fact.  And passionate fans are more than happy to spend time creating the content they care about.  This can, and does, apply to advertisers as well.  Just because your campaign is over doesn’t mean that consumers aren’t out there somewhere discussing and embracing your product and brand in a very public way.  The more advertisers get used to that fact and embrace social media as an integral part to their marketing strategy, the more likely they will be to harness that discussion for the benefit of the brand.