New Service Lets Celebs Speak Directly to Fans, Anywhere

What do Peter Facinelli, Drew Brees, Nick Cannon and Ashlee Simpson have in common besides being celebrities? They are control their own social media content by using Fantapper. Brand Affinity Technologies (BAT), a celebrity-driven digital endorsement marketing group, and United Talent Agency (UTA) have partnered in a bid to change the digital celebrity content landscape through the production launch of BAT's Fantapper platform. The platform is designed to help actors, musicians, athletes and other personalities influence, control and ultimately monetize their social media content. Fantapper's unique and proprietary technology gives artists and celebrities the ability to speak directly to the people who are reading articles, looking at images, and watching videos about them, no matter where those users happen to be online or where the celebrity if for that matter. "I'm privileged to have a social media fan base of well over one million followers, and I want to give them the best experience possible. Fantapper allows me to share personal content, and offers Apps, Pictures, Videos, and Games. It is truly amazing and a game changer for social," said Drew Brees, Super Bowl MVP. The celebrity content market is a multi-billion dollar industry, and the evolution of social media is fueling a new generation of content consumption and distribution. The idea of Fantapper is to provide an enhanced content experience to the standard online picture, text article, social post or tweet. When a consumer clicks on a photo or text reference of any celebrity, the platform automatically populates an expanded media window with dynamic apps, including original pictures and videos, games, popularity metrics, YouTube videos, Twitter and Facebook feeds – all specific to the pictured celebrity. The artists has control over what they want to create as a personalized and proprietary apps that appear on top of their online content such as sharing recent pictures and videos, posting true stories behind media coverage, or linking to their favorite charities or sponsors. In this way, the artist is allowed to connect to and monetize the social media posts on the web, and to direct fans to the things that artists care about the most. "In most cases, when an online site features a photo or a story about a celebrity, that is a conversation limited to the website and the consumer. The celebrity is the passive subject matter," says Ryan Steelberg, co-founder and CEO of BAT. "With Fantapper, the celebrity not only becomes part of the conversation, they can steer the conversation. UTA, like so many others in the entertainment world, understands that digital content and social media are key to opening channels of communication between celebrities and their fans." Fantapper works with consumers, who can quickly download a free desktop plug-in that works with most popular web browsers, enabling the Fantapper experience on any webpage that they navigate. Inversely, online publishers can integrate Fantapper into their website, so that any visitor – whether they have the plug-in or not – can enjoy the enhanced experience. And lastly, Fantapper content can be accessed via popular mobile devices, including Droid and Apple iOS. Fantapper already reaches millions of unique users every month and offers content and select Apps for over 40,000 celebrities. In addition, nearly one million users have already downloaded the Fantapper plug-in since it was first launched in beta, just five months ago. "Celebrities are the foundation for a multi-billion-dollar industry of online content-sharing, advertising, and merchandising; but they have surprisingly little control over most of what appears on the Internet," said Brent Weinstein, head of Digital Media at UTA. "BAT gives celebrities control by allowing them to help shape the conversation around digital content where it appears, while enhancing the fan-celebrity relationship."

Social Pro Daily

New Service Lets Celebs Speak Directly to Fans, Anywhere

Kenna McHugh

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Kenna McHugh