Ravens Steelers Rivalry Plays out on Social Media Mash Up

R2integrated Teams With WMAR-TV to Deploy R2iSMASH

BALTIMORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--R2integrated (R2i), a leading Internet marketing and technology company, in partnership with WMAR-TV, today announced that the virtual brouhaha surrounding the Ravens-Steelers game on Sunday, November 29 will be captured and displayed at ABC2news.com via the social media platform, R2iSMASH.

“ABC2 News is excited to partner with R2i and bring this technology to our viewers. This is another example of how abc2news.com delivers the area’s most innovative new media coverage to Baltimore”

Site located here: http://abc2news.com/ravens

Created by R2i, R2iSMASH drives interactivity around specific events, campaigns, or initiatives by combining feeds from popular social networking sites into one window. The R2iSMASH site for the Baltimore-Pittsburgh football game will collect fan-generated Tweets, texts, Flickr and cell phone photos, and blogs—all simultaneously, yielding a real-time gallery of content, commentary, and general trash-talk.

“Social media is changing the way sports such as football are consumed by enabling the Monday morning quarterback to share their game-time thoughts, emotions, and situations with others online as they happen,” said Matt Goddard, CEO, R2i. “R2iSMASH technology gathers these experiences from different sources on the Web and packages them for presentation, creating a compelling parallel view to the game itself.”

The R2iSMASH Ravens-Steelers site works by automatically aggregating content from Twitter and Flickr where either team is mentioned. Fans can actively contribute to R2iSMASH by sending text messages or e-mails to [e-mail] or [e-mail] or by including #ravens or #steelers in their Tweets. Fans with mobile devices can send photos to [e-mail] or [e-mail] or tag their photos in Flickr with “NFL Ravens” or “NFL Steelers.” Additionally, all content garnered by the site will be archived for instant replay.

“ABC2 News is excited to partner with R2i and bring this technology to our viewers. This is another example of how abc2news.com delivers the area’s most innovative new media coverage to Baltimore,” said ABC2, WMAR-TV’s director of new media, Dustin Wadsworth.

R2iSMASH was designed to help organizations effectively leverage social media to promote and add value to their critical initiatives. While other social media solutions require costly, time-consuming custom development, the R2iSMASH platform is proven and can be deployed in minutes. Once deployed, it requires no maintenance, and any needed changes to style or substance can be easily made.

Early this year, R2i—which has seen a 50 percent growth in revenue since 2008—deployed R2iSMASH sites to showcase the Under Armour Baltimore Marathon, the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation, and the Michael Jackson Tribute. Combined, the three sites aggregated more than 300,000 Tweets and texts feeds, and more than 5,250 photos.

For more information about R2integrated, visit www.r2integrated.com.

About R2integrated

R2integrated provides platforms and services that enable companies to more quickly and easily distribute critical marketing communications, implement rich internet applications, leverage social media and social networks, and derive critical metrics on performance. R2i technology empowers companies to create and manage the dynamic media and understand the social interactions that drive brand value and sales in the age of peer-to-peer communications.

About WMAR & Scripps

WMAR-TV was the nation’s 11^th (and Maryland’s first) television station to sign on-the-air in 1947. The station has been the site of many technological breakthroughs: first with a color film processor for television news and production, and the first Zoom camera lens for film and tape cameras. WMAR is owned by the E.W. Scripps Company.

The E. W. Scripps Company (www.scripps.com) is a diverse, 130-year-old media enterprise with interests in broadcast television stations, newspaper publishing, and licensing and syndication.

The company's portfolio of locally focused media properties includes: 10 broadcast TV stations, with six ABC-affiliated stations, three NBC affiliates and one independent; daily and community newspapers in 15 markets and the Washington, D.C.-based Scripps Media Center, home of the Scripps Howard News Service; and United Media, the licensor and syndicator of Peanuts, Dilbert and approximately 150 other features and comics.