True Blood Peripherals

It's going to be several more years before the entertainment industry figures out a way to truly integrate the communications technologies available to them these days. Of course, foremost on their minds is how to make a profit by doing so, so it isn't as though the technologies and methods don't already exist - they do. And because HBO is a pay channel, that gives them some leeway in the arena.

The Weirding is a big fan of HBO's True Blood, as evidenced here by our close following of the program in its first season. And HBO had begun promoting the show long before it debuted, with spoofy commercial spots featuring vampires discussing their "lifestyle" on talk shows and political news magazines, both real (Bill Maher) and fictitious. Each of these contained the URL to the American Vampire League's website.

You can join their cause on Facebook, where they are listed as a political organization and you can follow Nan Flanagan's Twitter. We show you how to follow Twitters in your AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) program over to The Cyberculturalist (as well as how to configure your AIM to work with Ping.FM so you can update your Twitter - and all of your social network status messages - through it, too). So even though True Blood is off the air for now, preparing for their second season, you can follow the goings-on surrounding the show online.

Hopefully, HBO will go further with this, combining their online efforts with the show itself to create an entirely fictional online world which coincides with that on the show. You could follow rumors on Twitter, breaking "news" on in-show ("real-world") events, and more - all by following the characters, blogs, and sites associated with True Blood. With a little ingenuity and some clever tweaking, you could live in the True Blood world online!

For now, you can still check out their online offerings... for what they're worth.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008