NEW YORK ? Media companies, entertainment brands and celebrities are increasingly tapping social communities accessible via mobile devices to boost fan engagement.

A panel at appssavvy?s Social Media Summit, moderated by Caroline McCarthy, journalist at CBS Interactive's CNET, New York, discussed the opportunities of mobile social communities for marketing. Foodspotting, a mobile application for spotting and sharing pictures of food that helps users find out what is currently around them, was discussed.

?One of our pillar partnerships has been with the legacy brand Zagat,? said Soraya Darabi, New York-based cofounder of Foodspotting. ?We?re pairing food blogging photos with location, but we worked out a relationship so that we opened our API to them and all of the photos across their mobile apps are powered by Foodspotting.

?It is important for us to send that message that we value traditional media institutions, and meld the old-world view with the new,? she said. ?We?ve catered toward people who travel, photographers, mobile app users, early-adopters, and we have the ability to give immediate feedback to a user.?

Mobile social entertainment network
GetGlue has applications for Apple?s iPhone and iPad, Google?s Android and Research In Motion?s BlackBerry, as well as a mobile Web site. It has partnered with a wide range of media brands and publishers to promote movies, TV shows, books and music by letting users check-in.

Examples of popular TV shows that have jumped on board with GetGlue include AMC?s ?Mad Men? and HBO?s ?Boardwalk Empire.?

However, Conan O?Brien was a tougher nut to crack.

?We pitched Conan before he started his new talk show on TBS, but we did not land it before the premiere,? said Kimber Myers, director of partnerships at GetGlue, New York. ?Our users were upset?they were still checking in and saying ?I?m watching Conan,? even though we didn?t have approval from Conan to let them earn stickers for doing various tasks like check-in.

?Our brand and show stickers are official stickers from the partners, but users were tweeting at us and at Team Coco to a ridiculous degree, and they eventually gave in, and it has been one of our most successful partnerships,? she said. ?We have a widget on TeamCoco.com that is only live during the once-a-week Web-only live episode, where we got a mention.

?Initially Conan?s team was not sure about whole GetGlue thing to but eventually said ?We want to do more stickers with you.??

SXSW buzz
One of the startups that generated the most buzz at South by Southwest Interactive is GroupMe, which lets people user either a mobile application or text messaging to message a group of friends rather than just one.

MTV?s ?America?s Best Dance Crew,? Oxygen?s ?Bad Girls Club,? Bon Jovi, Coachella and Bonnaroo have all partnered with GroupMe.

?We are creating micro-communities of friends and relatives, and more than 2 million messages sent per day via our platform,? said Jared Hecht, cofounder of GroupMe, New York. ?The things we look for with brands are places where there are obvious use cases and integrations, for example, with artists, people who send messages around musicians they like.

?We are not a big broadcast communication layer,? he said. ?It is about connecting with small groups of people who actually know each other in real life.?

Final Take
Mr. Hecht