I don’t hide the fact that I’m a fan of the Twilight Saga.  I have read all the books, saw the first two films at their midnight showing on their opening nights (And have my tickets for the midnight release of Eclipse), partnered to launch a Twilight Fansite, and have done a number of Twilight posts over the years.  So when I saw that one of my favorite Social Media sites, Mashable, started covering random Twilight news I was intrigued.

In the beginning it made sense.  Their first post covered the story of how the New Moon trailer leaked on the web, which I guess to a degree is news relevant enough since it was a huge social media hit and the studios tried to cover it up.  Then they had a live video chat with Twilight stars Peter Facinelli and Billy Burke about social media, again relevant since it was meant to be a social media interview.  Those of us who attended the event might recall the poor audio quality, choppy video and masses of teenage girls that flooded the room with no interest in social media.  And every month or so since then the Twilight stories have continued to roll in.

In each instance there is some sort of social media tie in.  They either cover a twitter reaction, Myspace premier, YouTube video, or other loose tie in, but the fact of the matter is Twilight is the only pop culture phenomenon that really gets this sort of attention on Mashable.  I made a comment to Mashable on Twitter in late in April asking them what their connection was to Twilight, but never got a response.  And my buddy Danny Brown left a comment on a recent post on Mashable about release of the Twilight Saga: Eclipse trailer simply asking, “And this is social media…. how?” Which has left me to believe that I’m not the only one out there thinking it’s a bit odd that Mashable has given the series so much love.

At first I thought maybe it was a specific author writing all of the posts and perhaps they were fans of the Twilight series, but as I dug a little deeper I found that the social media giant has been generating content about the films from a variety of writers; Ben Parr, Jennifer Van Grove, Barb Dybwad, Christina Warren, Adam Ostrow, and a handful of others.  I never pinned Parr or Ostrow as Twilight fans, but then again most people don’t pin me as one either, so what do I know?  The regular Twilight news just doesn’t seem to make sense.  It’s not as though Twilight is doing anything new or innovative with social media, so what makes it so newsworthy to the Mashable staff?

This is my plea to you Mashable…What is your connection to the Twilight Saga movies?  I know I’m just a lone blogger and a search and social addict, but I would love to know what it is about Twilight that dazzles you.  How did the Twilight Saga inject itself into your editorial calendar?  Do you have some sort of marketing tie in with Summit Entertainment?  Are your staffers a huge group of Twi-hards?  Are the posts an easy piece of link bait because they have the word “Twilight” in them? I’d love to know, and based on some comments I am reading on some of your past Twilight posts so do a lot of other Mashable readers.

Just when I thought I was going to be able to branch away from Twilight for a few weeks to focus on search marketing someone had to go and mess things up.  Actually this didn’t really mess things up, in fact it thrilled me, because now I’m not the only internet marketer who is talking about Twilight on his blog.  Granted the post I came across is industry related, but that’s irrelevant.

I was skimming through the reader tonight and I came across a post called Listening to Vampire Lovers by Social Media PR guru Danny Brown.  When I saw the excerpt in the reader and saw the word Twilight in the first sentence I knew that the post was a must read.  In the post Danny compares the success of the Twilight film and the change and controversy surrounding the film’s sequel to businesses exploring new ventures and alienating their existing customer base while trying to find new ones.

It’s a good post with some solid information on why change is good for your business, but only if you can do it in such a way that isn’t going to exclude anyone in your customer base.

First off let me wish all of my readers a happy new year.  I hope you all had a safe and eventful New Years Eve.  I thought I’d start out 2009 with something fun.  As many of my readers know I am a huge fan of the Twilight books, the Twilight movie, and the Twilight Soundtrack.

I’ve had the Twilight Soundtrack since about a week after its release, and sadly it has only left my cars CD player for brief moments.  So I decided to post a fun little poll to see when my readers think the disc will finally leave my car CD player permanently.

For you Twilight fans I plan to continue various Twilight related posts, so keep an eye out in the coming months, especially with New Moon going into production shortly. I’m sure my first post will probably come when they finally announce whether or not Taylor Lautner will continue the roll of Jacob in New Moon.

For the rest of you, I’ll continue my SEM, Social Media, and various other rants as well. Thanks for your continued support in 2009. Happy New Year Everyone!