You might notice that Apple isn’t “on social” the way many of their other Fortune 500 brethren are. They don’t have a social media manager and don’t invest in social marketing campaigns (in the traditional sense). On this week’s most social TV commercials chart (provided exclusively for Lost Remote by Bluefin Labs) Apple has shot into the top three proving how powerful the brand is on social TV. Read more

Social TV data company Bluefin Labs made a bold move in the social TV space by launching a version of their analytics geared towards brands back in April. A big trend we've seen this past year has been the consistent appearance of major brands investing in and experimenting with social TV. Boston and New York based Bluefin Labs has provided Lost Remote exclusively with their "Social TV Brand-scape," a detailed look at the most social brands, TV commercials and sponsorships...

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It doesn't always take a massive marketing budget and team to produce a second screen experience for a scripted show. TNT's Leverage, which recently began it's fifth season, has become "the first major TV series to do a behind-the scenes episode guide as an iBooks Author title," according to Electric Entertainment, the production company behind the show.

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A big win for Hulu and for Apple TV lovers. Hulu Plus is now available on the Apple TV brining the online video network's library of TV content, originals and movies to anyone with the $99 Apple device. Hulu Plus now has over two million subscribers and has launched originals that include Battleground and The Yard. What does this mean for the future of Apple TV and will Hulu's offerings compete with iTunes?

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Apple held it's highly-anticipated WWDC event today, and Tim Cook unveiled a new MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6 -- as well as Facebook integration, Facetime without WiFi and a replacement for Google Maps. But despite the rumors, no new Apple TV, no TV apps and no TV set. However, there was one announcement that caught our attention.

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That headline may not make much sense, but that's how Forrester's James McQuivey explains his idea for a new Apple TV set that could be different enough to be disruptive. While he calls it "Apple's coming plan to take over the TV business," like all reports on Apple TV these days, it's pure speculation. However, I think the product idea is unexpectedly good. Here's McQuivey's pitch:

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Apple took the wraps off a new retina display iPad (with 4G LTE) and a 1080p Apple TV box today (sorry no TV set), both of which will be available on March 16th. While the announcements themselves aren't particularly groundbreaking -- solid incremental improvements -- Tim Cook revealed a metric that should be a bit of shocker: "We sold more iPads in the last quarter of last year, than any PC maker sold of their PCs," he said...

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Apple sent out invitations today (right) for a March 7th event that appear to confirm the company will unveil a new iPad. But there's mounting evidence that a new Apple TV -- or something along those lines -- will be unveiled at the same time, too. If you visit just about any Best Buy, Fry's or similar electronics store, you'll discover that they've been sold out of Apple TV units for the last couple weeks, both online and in stores (we've checked several times over the last two weeks). When asked, Best Buy said they didn't know when they'd receive any more shipments.

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Update: Bloomberg reports that Jeff Robbin, who helped create the iPod in addition to the iTunes media store, is now guiding Apple's internal development of the new TV effort. The possibility of Apple launching a TV set has been a rumor for months, but the upcoming authorized biography of Steve Jobs seems to give it new momentum. Quoting now from author Walter Isaacson:

"'I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,' [Jobs] told me. 'It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.' No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. 'It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.'"

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