Watercooler Signs MGM, USA for TV Contests

Watercooler, which makes fan community applications for social networks like Facebook and MySpace, has some 22 million registered users talking about their favorite TV shows and sports team, playing trivia games and sharing information. What it didn’t have until this week was the actual video content or participation from the studios who make it.

But on Tuesday, Mountain View, Calif.-based Watercooler started integrating Hulu videos when appropriate. And coming soon are partnerships it just brokered with the television shows themselves. Watercooler CEO Kevin Chou told us yesterday that the company will be launching four contests with MGM’s Stargate, America Gladiators and Dead Like Me and USA’s Burn Notice.

For Stargate, which has 25,000 fans across Watercooler’s five social network platforms (one of the smaller communities, but a very passionate one, said Chou), MGM will be offering a meeting with one of the actors, writers or producers of the show as a reward for the best fan-submitted picture or video of themselves dressed in character. The show itself is culminating in a movie after running for 10 seasons.

MGM and Watercooler aren’t paying each other for the promotion, but rather selling it; Chou said he is in talks to secure “six-figure” sponsorships that will be split between the two.

“Heretofore we’ve been really focused on being a technology company; the next stage of our business is to start building the bridges between the shows and the fans,” said Chou. Watercooler has raised $4 million from Canaan Partners and has at times been profitable based on ad campaigns.

MGM marketing manager Cachita Hynes told us the Watercooler partnership was about connecting with fans in the environments they’ve already created for themselves and communicating with them about where and how to watch the latest episodes on video on demand or pay per view. She said MGM may partner with other fan community services for shows and movies that don’t have sites on Watercooler.

Both Chou and Hynes see a big opportunity to engage fans for shows that are no longer on the air. One of Watercooler’s larger communities is for Friends, at 600,000 members; even The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has 100,000. MGM’s Dead Like Me was canceled but could be resurrected if a movie based on it performs well. The thinking is, it might perform well if fans rally together around the Watercooler app.

The way we see it, the ultimate version of Watercooler would include the shows themselves, so people can interact in the same environment that they’re consuming content. Chou noted that the service sees spikes in traffic while an episode is airing and said his company would be monitoring how its audience responds to Hulu. “For us, we’re not entirely there yet — we’re always trying to see how our audience wants to interact.”

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