Win A Wii – Hey! Nielsen Olympic Trivia-thon

We’re doing out part to kick off the biggest global sporting event of the year — the 2008 Summer Olympics — by launching a greuling trivia contest based around the Olympics. Dozens of fanatic sports bloggers have contributed some very challenging questions (we hope you’re up on your fencing trivia!). A gold medal prize of a Nintendo Wii stocked with sports games awaits the winner. Find out more about the prizes, the rules, and the great sports bloggers that helped us build this brain-busting challenge.

PLAY NOW

Not a member? JOIN NOW. It’s free, painless, and fun.

You Asked For It: The Return Of The Trivia Quiz!

We’re at it again with a prize-packed, summer-themed quiz covering music and movies — 25 brain-teasers to test the depth of your pop culture brain.

We’ll pick a winner from members who have the most correct answers (check the Official Rules).

Prizes include an iPod Touch (yes, that’s the cool one), a year’s worth of Netflix DVDs, movie tickets, and credits for movie and music downloads.

Have a great summer and good luck!

TAKE THE QUIZ

More Ways To Cast Your Vote On Hey! Nielsen

Responding to some feedback from members, we’ve added Rate It buttons to the Rankings page, which lets you enter or update your ratings for your favorite (or least favorite) shows, movies, etc. To make it easier to find what you want, you can always sort the Rankings categorically, alphabetically, or, by which topic had the biggest move over the last day.

We’re just on the first wave of this idea, as we’re hoping to roll out more ways to make it easier for you to cast your vote and rate.

Speaking of voting… apparently there’s a Presidential Election this year? Take our latest poll. Pretend you’re a superdelegate! Tell us whom you’d vote for.

To Hey! Nielsen’s 100,000K Members. Thank You!!!

This week, a full eight months after we launched, Hey! Nielsen welcomed its 100,000th member! We’d like to thank all of you who have signed up, logged in, and sounded off.

You’ve created more than 86,000 opinions and 45,000 comments across nearly 5,000 topics.

All of this helps us get a clearer picture of not only who is watching, listening, browsing, playing… but also WHY. We’ve seen, heard, and read the passion that fans bring to the site and it reminds us that the emotional connection you have with a tv show, movie, singer, video game, etc. can’t be underestimated.

We hope you continue to raise your voice on Hey! Nielsen. We, and others, are definitely listening and taking your commentary and fiery feedback seriously. Your input on this site, and in other Nielsen studies where we have asked Hey! Nielsen members to join in, is extremely valuable. If you want to be included in any of those external studies, simply update your member profile to accept emails from us (you can change it back or unsubscribe at any time).

Going forward, we’ll continue to create more contests, incentives, prizes, and rewards, to show our on-going support of your valuable feedback.

Thanks again… Happy Posting!

Trivia Contest: The Results Are In!

Yesterday was the last day to take our Ultimate Pop Culture Trivia Challenge and we want to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone who participated. We had over 5,000 members test their knowledge a few dozen pop culture geniuses (or is it geniusii?) got all of the questions correct. We’ll be doing a random drawing next week for a prize winner, so keep checking back for more updates.

We also couldn’t have done this without the help of our amazingly savvy pop culture bloggers who all contributed great questions to the quiz. Still stumped by some of the questions? We’ve posted the answers to the quiz along with all of the participating blogs. Thanks again to everyone… more fun contests and prizes are on the way this summer.

Tags And Related Links: We’re Putting It All Together

One of the new features we’ve quietly rolled out on the site in the last week are the Tags and the Related Links. While we’re just getting started on both, you should have noticed them just below the Score info for each topic on their main page. This is where we’ll list things like type of show, what night it’s on, and personalities or other related topics for you comment on. For example, if you go to a page for an actor, you can see the recent movies that actor is linked to, and vice versa. We also break it down by network as well next to the web link on that page as well.

One of the cool things this system lets us do is group topics like sports and link up a number of personalities and movies and TV shows with sports-related themes.

There are literally thousands of connections for us to make on these topics but we’re busy putting it all together (and working on making it faster — yes, we read your feedback). If you have a grouping you’d like to see or items you think should be related, let us know. We hope that it gives you more to consider and comment on when browsing the site.

Our Trivia Contest Is No Joke

Yes, our launching a trivia contest on April Fools Day might make you think this link will take you to a Rick Astley video, but it doesn’t. Instead we’ve partnered with a few dozen of our favorite pop culture sites and bloggers to build a quiz that sure to please masters of media minutiae.

Another new thing on the site that is no joke is that we’ve upgraded a few things under the hood on our blog, which we think will make it easier to use, share, and, interact with. If there’s a bookmarking site you use that’s not among the links below, just let us know, and we can add it.

Member Levels Added. I Am Legend… Are You?

We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t all fans of TV, movies, music, etc. But how many of us are on our way to being stars? How many true tastemakers do we have out there? Are there any big shots or legends roaming this site?

Now we can finally find out.

This week we started tagging our members with levels to indicate their place in the Hey! Nielsen universe (actually our universe is a cluster of beige cubes, but… you get the idea) with the level names ranging from:

FAN, RISING STAR, TASTEMAKER, BIG SHOT, and LEGEND.

So, how do you become a legend? Well, in some cases it involves hard work, stepping on other people to get what you want, and taking a producer credit where you really didn’t deserve one… but on this site it’s about three things:

Volume, Variety, and Value.

First off, if you come to the site and post a lot of opinions and comments, that’s going to help, but it won’t matter much if you’re just posting about the same topics all the time. The more topics and categories you demonstrate your knowledge and passion for, the more it adds up. This adds value for other users who can see the depth of your genius. But back to volume. See that part in your profile page that says “My Megaphones?” That’s where you add in your links to your other homes on the web where you live out loud — this could be your blog, your facebook profile, you twitter feed… anyplace you make noise on the web, we want to hear about it.

So break out of your fandom: post more, be more diverse, spread the word and your influence.

photo: urbandictionary.com

Sweet Post Award (Freakin’ Sweet Edition)

2008 is the year where we’ll be calling out more fun, interesting, controversial, and just plain crazy opinions or comments we see on Hey! Nielsen. Basically, any post that makes us say… “sweeeet,” after reading it. Today, it’s the (Rhode Island Accent Here) “Freakin’ Sweet Post Award” in honor of Family Guy’s Peter Griffin.

Today’s Sweet Post: Jeromage on Family Guy

“I share a kindred spirit with Peter, lovable but moronic.
When I watch Peter and his antics, I think, “there go I but for the
Grace of God.” That could be me, if it were not for my functioning
Cerebrum.”

Well said Jeromage! Sometimes it takes a cartoon to raise a serious issue. How many of us watch a show because we identify with the main character? Or is it that the main character (or any character) makes us feel better about our own troubles.

We’d love to know: What character in TV or Film do you identify with most?

Leave a comment or add to the original post.

Hey! Nielsen & Billboard.com Best Music Blog Contest

(UPDATED 12/13)

WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Following the success (good for us, good for bloggers)
of our First Annual TV Blog Contest, we’re launching our First Annual Music
Blog Contest on Monday, November 12. With the help of our friends at
Billboard.com, we’ve nominated a heap of U.S. blogs that serve up reviews, features, downloads, and more. Check out the complete list of blogs after the jump and the rules here.

You must be a member to vote. Membership is free!

A big thanks to Billboard.com’s Jaded Insider Blog for their help and to our newest H!N teammate Sarah Epler who researched all of the sites and stats, and has not taken her headphones off in a week.