Last week I flew home to Sacramento to spend Mother’s Day with my Mom. 3,000 miles is a long airplane ride, so I used this time to myself to catch up on some reading. With the release of the third installment in the Twilight saga, Eclipse, opening June 30, I was compelled to read the book in advance– so I am better prepared to scream with the teenage girls when “Jacob” enters the scene with his shirt off.

Obviously Twilight is all the rage, and upon some discovery, the brand has taken over almost every aspect of social and new media to continue to build buzz—as if it needed any more!

Today I officially joined the other 5.7 million fans on Facebook to see how social media is really done. I joined the hype by entering to win “Bella’s” engagement ring from the movie; getting a sneak peak of the band Muse’s  ”Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever)” on the Eclipse soundtrack website; and of course viewed the latest Eclipse trailer.

And for the sole purpose of my education (really), I downloaded the Twilight Tracker App to my iphone. This official app for the Twilight Saga movies shares news, photos, and film clips. And strangely, users can choose a Twilight character avatar and talk to other fans via the public message board. Another interesting app is the Vampire Guide to Forks, where Twilight fans can browse Twilight points of interest in this town made famous by the novels and movies. (The Forks Chamber of Commerce is even in on this, and has a special page dedicated to Twilight on its website!)

And just yesterday, on a social media venue that I thought had fizzled out, tracks from the upcoming Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack were revealed one by one on MySpace Music, every half hour through out the day, for seven hours.

I am certain that this Twilight rage is going to be the center of many case studies written on Emerging Media in the future. These efforts just keeps evolving more and more with each film. And continue to lure in innocent bystander like myself into its spell. At least this time I can say it is for education’s sake!

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