We’re doing out part to kick off the biggest global sporting event of the year — the 2008 Summer Olympics — by launching a greuling trivia contest based around the Olympics. Dozens of fanatic sports bloggers have contributed some very challenging questions (we hope you’re up on your fencing trivia!). A gold medal prize of a Nintendo Wii stocked with sports games awaits the winner. Find out more about the prizes, the rules, and the great sports bloggers that helped us build this brain-busting challenge.
Not a member? JOIN NOW. It’s free, painless, and fun.
We’re at it again with a prize-packed, summer-themed quiz covering music and movies — 25 brain-teasers to test the depth of your pop culture brain.
We’ll pick a winner from members who have the most correct answers (check the Official Rules).
Prizes include an iPod Touch (yes, that’s the cool one), a year’s worth of Netflix DVDs, movie tickets, and credits for movie and music downloads.
Have a great summer and good luck!
TAKE THE QUIZ
Responding to some feedback from members, we’ve added Rate It buttons to the Rankings page, which lets you enter or update your ratings for your favorite (or least favorite) shows, movies, etc. To make it easier to find what you want, you can always sort the Rankings categorically, alphabetically, or, by which topic had the biggest move over the last day.
We’re just on the first wave of this idea, as we’re hoping to roll out more ways to make it easier for you to cast your vote and rate.
Speaking of voting… apparently there’s a Presidential Election this year? Take our latest poll. Pretend you’re a superdelegate! Tell us whom you’d vote for.
This week, a full eight months after we launched, Hey! Nielsen welcomed its 100,000th member! We’d like to thank all of you who have signed up, logged in, and sounded off.
You’ve created more than 86,000 opinions and 45,000 comments across nearly 5,000 topics.
All of this helps us get a clearer picture of not only who is watching, listening, browsing, playing… but also WHY. We’ve seen, heard, and read the passion that fans bring to the site and it reminds us that the emotional connection you have with a tv show, movie, singer, video game, etc. can’t be underestimated.
We hope you continue to raise your voice on Hey! Nielsen. We, and others, are definitely listening and taking your commentary and fiery feedback seriously. Your input on this site, and in other Nielsen studies where we have asked Hey! Nielsen members to join in, is extremely valuable. If you want to be included in any of those external studies, simply update your member profile to accept emails from us (you can change it back or unsubscribe at any time).
Going forward, we’ll continue to create more contests, incentives, prizes, and rewards, to show our on-going support of your valuable feedback.
Thanks again… Happy Posting!
Yesterday was the last day to take our Ultimate Pop Culture Trivia Challenge and we want to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone who participated. We had over 5,000 members test their knowledge a few dozen pop culture geniuses (or is it geniusii?) got all of the questions correct. We’ll be doing a random drawing next week for a prize winner, so keep checking back for more updates.
We also couldn’t have done this without the help of our amazingly savvy pop culture bloggers who all contributed great questions to the quiz. Still stumped by some of the questions? We’ve posted the answers to the quiz along with all of the participating blogs. Thanks again to everyone… more fun contests and prizes are on the way this summer.
One of the new features we’ve quietly rolled out on the site in the last week are the Tags and the Related Links. While we’re just getting started on both, you should have noticed them just below the Score info for each topic on their main page. This is where we’ll list things like type of show, what night it’s on, and personalities or other related topics for you comment on. For example, if you go to a page for an actor, you can see the recent movies that actor is linked to, and vice versa. We also break it down by network as well next to the web link on that page as well.
One of the cool things this system lets us do is group topics like sports and link up a number of personalities and movies and TV shows with sports-related themes.
There are literally thousands of connections for us to make on these topics but we’re busy putting it all together (and working on making it faster — yes, we read your feedback). If you have a grouping you’d like to see or items you think should be related, let us know. We hope that it gives you more to consider and comment on when browsing the site.
Yes, our launching a trivia contest on April Fools Day might make you think this link will take you to a Rick Astley video, but it doesn’t. Instead we’ve partnered with a few dozen of our favorite pop culture sites and bloggers to build a quiz that sure to please masters of media minutiae.
Another new thing on the site that is no joke is that we’ve upgraded a few things under the hood on our blog, which we think will make it easier to use, share, and, interact with. If there’s a bookmarking site you use that’s not among the links below, just let us know, and we can add it.
We get a lot of email and posts asking about who is really looking at Hey! Nielsen and if all the opinions, comments, and votes are really making a difference. We can tell you that in 2008, as our user base grows (we just hit 50K, yeah!) and becomes more and more diverse, the industry is taking notice and becoming increasingly interested in what Hey! Nielsen members have to say. Just this year, Hey! Nielsen has been a valuable platform for three custom surveys regarding advertising and television viewing: One, a survey of Super Bowl ads, another a survey on a new network TV show, and another on the impact of the writers strike. This is a trend we are dedicated to continuing, where select members of Hey! Nielsen are singled out for their valuable feedback to the industry. So, no only does the general chatter and feedback on the site become a valuable buzz tool for the industry, but additional specific surveys or polls will be another way for your voice to be heard. We recently added a quick poll feature on the site, that we’ll expand over the next few weeks into something that will help us and the industry get a real-time handle on trends and preferences of our tastemaking member base.
Again, we could never promise that posting on the site or taking part in a survey will result in your favorite show being renewed, etc., but the site is gathering momentum as a credible source for feedback to the industry. With more than 41K opinions and nearly 130K comments to date, your input is definitely adding up.
Thanks again for your continued support. We realize there are more improvements to make to the site and we are planning the majority of our 2008 upgrades around the requests of the users.
If you have any ideas for polls you’d like to see on the site, let us know at hey@nielsen.com.
UPDATE: We’ve reorganized the site so that these news and chart feeds are scattered throughout the site. But the concept remains, you can find up-to-the-minute news broken down by category on Hey! Nielsen.
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We’ve added a new section to the site… The Hey! Wire. We’re still adding ideas and content to it, but we wanted to get it out there ASAP. Now, from one page you can see what’s happening across the entertainment world by checking out real-time news from our pals at Hollywood Reporter and Billboard.
We also give you a quick snapshot of all the top entertainment charts across Nielsen, from TV to Video Games.
And, because Hey! Nielsen members are now part of the info and insight The Nielsen Company provides, we pull in the hot topics you’re talking about in real time. So, beneath the news, you’ll see the latest topics being discussed in each category.
Now, you also may have noticed that this section comes at the expense of a Calendar features that was previously listed on the site. We are still considering incorporating such a feature to the site, but we don’t have a solid launch date for it at this time, or it may manifest itself in another form.
Hope you enjoy the Hey! Wire page… we think it’s a great way to keep track of new stories and trends.
We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t all fans of TV, movies, music, etc. But how many of us are on our way to being stars? How many true tastemakers do we have out there? Are there any big shots or legends roaming this site?
Now we can finally find out.
This week we started tagging our members with levels to indicate their place in the Hey! Nielsen universe (actually our universe is a cluster of beige cubes, but… you get the idea) with the level names ranging from:
FAN, RISING STAR, TASTEMAKER, BIG SHOT, and LEGEND.
So, how do you become a legend? Well, in some cases it involves hard work, stepping on other people to get what you want, and taking a producer credit where you really didn’t deserve one… but on this site it’s about three things:
Volume, Variety, and Value.
First off, if you come to the site and post a lot of opinions and comments, that’s going to help, but it won’t matter much if you’re just posting about the same topics all the time. The more topics and categories you demonstrate your knowledge and passion for, the more it adds up. This adds value for other users who can see the depth of your genius. But back to volume. See that part in your profile page that says “My Megaphones?” That’s where you add in your links to your other homes on the web where you live out loud — this could be your blog, your facebook profile, you twitter feed… anyplace you make noise on the web, we want to hear about it.
So break out of your fandom: post more, be more diverse, spread the word and your influence.
photo: urbandictionary.com
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