@midnight is many things. It's a late night game show, it is a Twitter handle, but all in all, it's an immersive 24/7 experience that is constantly redefining interactive entertainment. It all starts on television, but @midnight truly lives on the internet, driven by Twitter and powered by fan participation. Unlike the rest of television, @midnight is just as a television show with some social accounts, but rather it's a multiplatform social presence with a television show.
Anybody who's anybody is on Twitter, from celebrities looking to connect with millions of fans to Joe Schmo who wants to post random thoughts to his 20 followers. It has the most timely breaking news and it absolutely thrives on trending topics.
And that's where @midnight comes in. The name of the show isn't just to tell viewers when it's on. Rather at its core, the name of the show is its Twitter handle, because that's what the show is all about.
Every night Monday through Thursday, a phenomenon happens. A hashtag starts trending, out of nowhere only minutes after being released into the digital jungle that is Twitter. Similar to a hashtag the night before, and the night before that, it grows at an exponential rate. At 11:30 it's a mere cub, but quickly it grows into a beast, trending worldwide and feasting off of thousands of tweets which the Twittersphere has been yearning to feed it Within a half hour of its introduction, seemingly out of nowhere, the once gentle hashtag is now the number one worldwide trend. Rinse and repeat, it's about to happen again tomorrow.
That's the phenomenon of #HashtagWars – the signature game of @midnight. It does indeed trend worldwide nightly, at the number one slot more times than not, sometimes well into the next day. Brands also pick up hashtags as marketing tools, celebrities use them to join the conversation, and all because @midnight kicked it off.
At their core, Hashtags are simply a way to spark, evolve, or join a conversation. And that's what @midnight does, every night, one hashtag at a time. Something topical that day is turned into a hashtag, and once tweeted, it takes off faster than a rocket to the moon.
After the game begins to slow down, it's brought back to life when @midnight releases their Top-10 selections from the night before, and it all comes to a head back where it all began, on television, when the winning tweet is shown just as the next hashtag is announced.
@midnight #HashtagWars is truly changing the way that people consume and also participate with television, one hashtag and one night at a time.
#FTW