MTV Launches "Follow Me" Contest To Find First Twitter Jockey

If video killed the radio star, and video jockeys killed the disc jockeys, is Twitter about to kill the video star?  Yeah, that’s a bit cliche, but MTV is hiring their first Twitter jockey and the person will be responsible for being “brand-new face and voice for MTV across social media platforms, including MTV.com, to expand the two-way dialogue between MTV and its global audience.”  MTV doesn’t define the culture the way they did in the 80s and 90s, but this move definitely represents the growing commercial power of Twitter.

The first thing that’s surprising about the news is the focus on Twitter.  The person will be responsible for all sorts of social media and the title could have been “Facebook Jockey” as well, but Twitter seems to hold a real cache as a ‘cool’ place of connecting with users.  It probably has something to do with the fact that Facebook feels very much like a utility, rather than a place to explore or laugh, as Twitter does.  This is reflected in the options that MTV would have when deciding where the best place to promote their new jockey.  They’d be able to either create a Facebook Jockey with a Facebook Fan Page as the central location, or a Twitter Jockey with a Twitter account like MTV_TJ_JEN.  Not to mention that while Twitter is a smaller userbase, the site has a large portion of celebrities that use it as their main outlet.  More information on the contest is below:

MTV and ZYNC from American Express will launch “Follow Me: The Search for the First MTV TJ”, in which 20 social media enthusiasts compete head-to-head in Twitter challenges for the ultimate dream job in New York as MTV’s first TJ. Edelman’s TweetLevel – which measures an individual’s influence on Twitter – will be used as the valuation tool to assess the contestants in the search for MTV’s top tweeter. Fans of the show will be able to follow the contestants’ progress on the customized TweetLevel site at zync.mtv.com.

TweetLevel will rank each contestant’s performance based on his or her influence, popularity, engagement and trust. Based on these rankings, candidates will advance to the live on-air finale on August 8, where the MTV audience will vote for the first MTV TJ.  TweetLevel uses a unique algorithm of more than 30 metrics which take into account:

· Influence – what you say is interesting and many people listen to it

· Popularity – how many people follow you

· Engagement – how actively you participate within your community

· Trust – do people believe what you say

Read more about the candidates and promotion via the ZYNCSM Card Facebook page (www.facebook.com/zync).

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