San Francisco — Exploring to widen the parameters of its online identities manager Socialthing social networking news feed service, AOL on Tuesday announced plans to integrate it in across corporate sibling Warner Bros. Television Group (WBTVG).
The deal also indicates a new closeness with its fellow Time Warner subsidiary, even as the company moves to spin off AOL. In past years, WBTVG and AOL would often downplay any relationship to each other. But as AOL tries to build up its social net tools, alongside its own programming, the Time Warner unit needs all the friends it can get.
So, if you see a “Gossip Girl” video on TheCW.com or play a game on DCHeroZone.com, it will show up in your feed, and you can keep tabs on what your friends are doing as well (and share bits of content with them). There will also be fictional Socialthing profiles for characters like the “Gossip Girl” cast as part of a broader promotional effort.
Joanna Shields, the president of AOL People Networks, said that fans will be able to use the service to “converse and connect around hit TV shows such as [Gossip Girl] and broadcast their passion and opinions to anyone across the Internet.”
“AOL is allowing leading media brands such as Warner Bros. Television Group to tap into the power of the social graph by merging the strength and global reach of our messaging networks with our powerful social networking tools,” said Shields.
“Warner Bros. is excited to be working with Joanna and her team,” said Craig Hunegs, Executive Vice President, Business Management, Warner Bros. Television Group. “Socialthing, combined with the stories and programs on our sites, will create a powerful and engaging combination of content, community and conversation for our users.”
AOL said that users will be able to sign on to Socialthing using their AOL or AIM credentials, and eventually will also be able to log in using their Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo or OpenID credentials.
Additionally, WBTVG has been working with a number of social nets to promote the online content on its various sites: CWTV.com, TheWB.com, KidsWB.com, DCHeroZone.com, Essence.com and Momlogic.com since last year, when it began creating broadband content independent of its broadcast productions. WBTVG also made an agreement with MySpace last fall to market one of its original web video series, Sorority Forever on the reincarnated video portal TheWB.com.