A New and Improved Moogi

Since Moogi was first launched a little over a year ago, we’ve been hard at work improving the site. Your feedback has been invaluable in doing so. We’ve been listening, and you seem to have three main concerns: slow page loads, tedious logging tools, and not enough ad revenue. We think we’ve made some good progress on all three fronts.

Faster Page Loads

We weren’t quite prepared for the vast amount of data our SuperLoggers would create. But what a great problem that is to have! So we’ve tightened our Javascripts, cut redundant HTML and packed our CSS’s, all to make our load times quicker. Here’s to a faster Moogi.

Improved SuperLogger Tools

We’ve introduced a new page to streamline your ability to add existing items to shows. With this new page, Quick Add, we’ve done our best to minimize the number of clicks it takes to add appropriate items to new episodes and scenes. We encourage you to try it out, and let us know what you think. Making you more efficient makes Moogi better.

You’ll see links to the Quick Add page on Episode and Scene pages for which you are a SuperLogger.

Potential New Revenue Options

You’ve told us that our Google Adsense revenue sharing model wasn’t bringing in as much money as expected. We hear you loud and clear on this one. Rest assured, we can’t make money unless you do. Our SuperLoggers are a core piece of Moogi’s existence, and we want to make sure you’re incentivized properly. We’re currently exploring a secondary approach involving retail affiliate programs. You’ll notice links to merchants throughout Moogi (particularly Amazon.com). While we haven’t yet opened this up to SuperLoggers, we’re hoping this model will complement Google Adsense nicely. But I’ve already said to much. Good things are coming up. You’ll see :)

We’re always eager to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave us your feedback at http://www.moogi.com/Feedback, or drop us a line at moogi@moogi.com. Please let us know if you’d like to join our SuperLogger program.

To help guide you through these new changes, we’ve revamped our tip system. Whenever you see an orange question mark icon, click it for a helpful tip.

http://www.moogi.com
http://twitter.com/Moogi
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Moogi/48324503041

Commercial ad campaigns driven by what consumers are watching

A few weeks ago, I read an article about Pepsi giving Hulu a “blast from the past” (read here) with retro ads that are targeted at dated content which Hulu is streaming on their site. To us at Moogi, this advertising model is very interesting. But yet, why exactly would a brand as mature as Pepsi want to allocate such a significant portion of their marketing budget towards developing Ad campaigns customized for dated shows from the 70’s and 80’s? From our perspective, we believe that contextualizing video ads for television shows is the optimal way to reach audiences and more effectively monetize television shows.

The historically successful audience demographic based video advertising strategy that has worked for programmers targeting living room viewers, will not work on the internet. The internet is a completely new field. Both programmers and brands better be ready to play ball if they want to successfully score with consumers. (Sorry for the awful soccer analogy) This is definitely an instance where Pepsi’s maturity and lead should be followed. In our data business, it is indeed exciting to see a brand with street-cred recognize the value of looking at/into the actual show, the vehicle through which their brand is being sold, for inspiration to develop attractive ads that can successfully reach fans on the internet.

We strongly believe that every data point that can be aggregated from a show, organized and linked to that same show, the source of relevance, will inevitably create value for brands and their advertisers as they target consumers. In the case of Pepsi, a viewer is watching reruns of “Miami Vice” on TV, there’s no way to reach information relevant to the show – the funny pastel blazers, muscle cars, awesome 80’s tunes etc. Pepsi’s push for a context based advertising solution creates a way to connect audiences with the context under which the show exists – in this case, the time-period when the show was created. Moogi, similarly, is creating a platform to allow brands to leverage “context” in their objective to reach audiences, providing programmers and content distributors with a diversified solution to better leverage the web in order to more effectively monetize shows, and more importantly giving audiences the ability to look deeper into shows. Without this triangulation, brands contextualize, programmers monetize and audiences are gratified with info, replicating the traditional demographic based commercial placement model won’t work for the internet.

Has Hulu really figured out the optimal strategy for monetizing their ever-growing library of premium content – television, feature films, documentaries etc? Time will tell. However, they are slowly moving in the right direction. Google figured it out with search based ads. Programmers and content distributors alike will need to figure out the right solution. For now, it’s just great to see Pepsi taking the risk, to hopefully reap the reward of successfully reaching audiences through a context based video ad solution. When the rest of the industry starts to realize the value and step forward to make a change, Moogi will be there supplying the necessary data to help facilitate the transition.

Making Moogi Yours: Adding New Shows

Moogi tracks products, information, audio tracks, locations and cast information across hundreds of episodic television shows, but we’re always looking for new shows to add to our roster. Do you prefer re-runs of “Saved by the Bell” over new episodes of “J.O.N.A.S.”? No problem! If you can’t find a particular show on Moogi, just visit our TV SHOWS page (http://www.moogi.com/tvshows.php) and click on the Suggest a new show link on the right-hand side of the page, right below the blank auto-complete box. When the “Suggest new shows” overlay box appears:

1. Enter the name of the show(s) that you would like us to add to Moogi — and feel free to add in a line or two about why you’re itching to learn more about this show
2. Click on the Submit button, and;
3. We will respond to your request as quickly as we can.

Whether you’ve fallen in love with a brand new show (e.g. Royal Pains, Glee, Nurse Jackie, etc.) or if you can’t quite forget something that has long-since gone off the air (e.g. Firefly, Sex & The City, Arrested Development, etc.), Moogi wants to cover all of the shows that matter to you…

Stay up to date with Moogi RSS feeds

Want to be notified of new additions to your favorite shows or characters at moogi? We offer RSS feeds that do just that. You can subscribe to get updates anytime anything is added to a show, season, episode or even specific scene. Just go to the page you want to subscribe to (the show, season, episode or scene page) and click on the RSS icon in the orange section at the top of the page:

You can also click on the same RSS icon in the browser address bar. To follow an RSS feed for a character, actor, song, artist, product, location, info or brand, just go to its corresponding page and subscribe by clicking on that same icon. You can add these feeds to your RSS reader of choice, and if you don’t have one I’ll suggest adding RSS feeds to MS Outlook 2007, Google Reader, or your web browser itself. We think RSS is great way to stay on top of lots of different things at moogi, by having updates delivered right to you. If you have any questions or trouble with the RSS feeds, just add to the comments here.

Making Moogi Yours: Something Missing?

As Moogi aims to be the most comprehensive, authoritative source of everything seen and heard on TV, and given the massive amount of new TV content being released each day, it’s inevitable that we might miss a show here, a character there, or a product anywhere. That’s where we depend on active users like you to help the Moogi community grow! This series of “Making Moogi Yours” posts will introduce some of the tools on moogi.com that allow you to share your expertise, observations and preferences with your fellow Moogiers. Something Missing? While browsing Moogi, you might sometimes notice that something is missing from a specific scene, episode, or season of your favorite show. Maybe the missing object is a character or a cultural reference or a song that is playing in the background – or maybe you’ll think of a similar product that looks just like something that was featured in your favorite show. If you spot any omissions or have any suggestions, just scroll to the bottom of your show’s page and you should see two different functionalities that should help us improve Moogi, Create a new comment or question (in the Discussion box) and Suggest a new item (just below the Discussion box):

• Click on Create a new comment or question to ask a question if you know that something is missing, but you are not sure what the item is.

If, for example, the missing object is a product, can you describe what it looked like? Do you know who was wearing it (or, in the case of non-apparel products, to whom it belonged)?

The benefit of asking a question is that it can be answered by Moogi or by any other user in the Moogi community who shares your interest.

Sometimes we won’t be able to give you the answer you want to hear, but that’s the nature of the television industry today. Some featured wardrobe and products are not manufactured and available for purchase; the same goes for certain song libraries (original music scores often remain unreleased) and set locations (that little cafe you loved on-screen might only exist on a Hollywood soundstage). In all of these cases, we will do our best to steer you in the right direction or at least help you find a nice substitute for whatever caught your attention on-screen.

• Click on the suggest a new item link (just below the Discussion box and above the bottom navigation) if you know exactly what has been omitted and you would like to share your knowledge with Moogi and your fellow users.

Tell us what kind of data object (Character, Info, Audio, Location, Product or Similar Product) you would like us to add, let us know why you think we should make this addition to Moogi.

The more details you can provide, the better we will able to assess your tips and get back to you. So, for example, if a song is missing, providing us with whatever information you do have (i.e. What is the name of the song or artist? Did you read about the song’s appearance somewhere or did you immediately recognize its appearance when it played on-screen?)

We will review your questions and suggestions and get back to you and get back to you as quickly as possible. Create a new comment or question and suggest a new item appear at the bottom of every show page on Moogi - so regardless of what show, season, episode or scene you are looking at, improvement and gratification are just a few clicks away!

The Moogi Bookmarklet

Hello! I’m Steve, the tech guy here at moogi.

We think Moogi.com is a great resource for people to find and interact with products, locations, and other information within TV shows, episodes and scenes.  But what about seeing that data while you are watching a show on a site like Hulu, Fancast, Veoh or one of the major network sites?

To make that work, we built the Moogi Bookmarklet.

The Bookmarklet allows you to pull up an overlay on top of any website.  For example, you could be watching an episode of Gossip Girl on www.cwtv.com, and then pull up this overlay to see the products characters are wearing, or which songs are in a scene. After you pick the episode, you can pick a scene and see exactly which objects are in that scene. By default, the bookmarklet shows all information related to:  Characters, Products, Locations, Music and Information.  However, you can modify the display by using the checkboxes on the right of the overlay to select only specific data categories.

You can also log in to your moogi account and save “Moogied moments” to your My Moogi page, enabling you to easily refer back to your favorite moments later.

The overlay sits at the top of any web page.  You can click in the upper right of the Bookmarklet to pop the overlay out into its own window.

Getting the Bookmarklet

More detailed instructions about adding the Moogi Bookmarklet to your web browser can be found here: bookmarklet instructions

You can also simply use one of the icons below in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari.

Firefox: Click and drag this to your toolbar.

Internet Explorer: Right click on this , choose “Add to Favorites” and then add to the “Links” folder (IE 6, IE 7) or “Favorites Bar” (IE 8).

Click “yes” to move past any security warnings.

Safari: Click and drag this to your toolbar.

That’s it, no real “installation” necessary. Click the Bookmarklet icon in your toolbar to bring up the overlay, and just click it again to hide the overlay.

It’s manual, for now…

The bookmarklet does not currently follow along with the time code of playing video - so if you hear a song in the background of a scene and want to know what it is, you simply drag the slider over in the bookmarklet to the appropriate time, or select the scene from the dropdown in the bookmarklet.

The Moogi Bookmarklet is being constantly updated and improved.  We’ll be working with different sites to allow the Bookmarklet to update with the time in video automatically.   Even now, with manual updating, the Bookmarklet works with any site.

We think the Bookmarklet is really useful and will enhance both your television watching and Moogi experiences.  If you have any trouble with it, comments or suggestions, post here or write to  tech@moogi.com -  thanks!

Welcome to Moogi

Welcome to Moogi. We are ecstatic that you have taken the time to visit us. What we do at Moogi is simple: gather and organize data from TV shows so that you, the fan, can access that info in a simple way, and at your convenience. If you are like me, at some point, while watching a TV show, movie or even a music-video, something caught your attention and left you yearning to dig deeper into the show or movie. For me, this started when I was a wee little lad.

In my younger years, I was obsessed with PBS; still am. I remember being hooked-on every episode of NATURE, Masterpiece Classics and NOVA. My Sunday night routine would commence with a can of Niagara Falls (spray starch), the ironing-board, iron, my navy-blue khakis and powder-blue button-down shirts. It was like clock-work. I would park the ironing board smack in front of the TV, just in time for NATURE. 7:55, I am straightening the hanger behind the TV to get clear signal. 8:05, my mom’s commanding, “back away from the TV”. A few minutes later, she is distracted and I am right back in front of the tube. I remember wanting to know more about everything that I was experiencing while watching the show: the geography, the animals, the narrator, the anthropologists, the theories, the history and of course, the soundtrack. I would spend the next day flipping through the encyclopedia, prolonging the experience as I dug deeper into the back-story of the episode I had watched. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Maybe your Sunday routine is spent hooked on Desperate Housewives. Or maybe you have a Monday routine, and you are fixated on House. Whatever your TV viewing habits, I am certain that we share the desire to know more about anything interesting that stimulates our curiosity during the course of watching the show. Whether it is the iconic collection of Manolo Blahniks that Carrie Bradshaw wore during countless episodes of Sex and the City, the recipe for Ghanaian fried-fish from one of Anthony Bourdain’s escapades, the trendy bars and lounges where Lauren Conrad and her gang frequent during The Hills, or even the memorable theme-song to How I Met Your Mother; things like these catch our attention and pique our curiosity while we are watching TV shows or movies. The problem, however, is how to access this information. With the absence of a viable solution, you either forget about that “thing”, go search for an answer on Google, or like me, a decade and a half ago, grab a book or two to find an answer.

My pre-pubescent solution was archaic, but that was ages ago. Google can provide a lot of great text results, but good luck sifting through those to find an answer. End-credits can maybe provide you with some ideas, but if your eye can race those scrolling texts, then you are in business. The issue at hand is simple; no one took the time to gather and consolidate answers to questions that we inevitably always ask ourselves when we are watching TV. The advent of IMDB in the 1990’s got us a step closer with information about the show’s cast. But what/who is Carrie wearing? What is Bourdain eating and how can I prepare it? Where in LA is LC partying? Who is the artist that performs the catchy theme song to How I Met Your Mother? Questions such as these get us jazzed-up at Moogi, because our business will venture where none have in the past, and give you the accurate answers you seek.

Like you, we at Moogi are TV fans and we recognize the need to address this problem. We have developed a simple platform to provide you and other fans of TV with answers to questions about what all of us see and hear while watching television shows. Moogi will enhance the way you watch TV and give you the freedom to dig deeper into your television viewing experience. As much as we are about what’s in television shows, we are about giving you the freedom to choose how you want to interact with the information from your favorite shows.

It is a great pleasure and thrill to be a member of the team who’s bringing this service to you. Browse through your favorite shows; learn more about the products, fashion, restaurants, bars, recipes and destinations that pique your curiosity. As of today, the way you experience televisions shows has officially changed.