This is an innovative use of social media – US fans of HBO’s vampire drama ‘True Blood’ who buy the second season on Blu-ray are able to post to Twitter and Facebook as they watch.

It’s not the first time this has been done – Blu-ray releases including ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘The Watchmen’ had Facebook functionality – but it’s the most sophisticated.

It works by allowing viewers to post comments onto ‘True Blood’ Facebook and Twitter pages. It also automatically sends updates to Facebook and Twitter as viewers watch the episodes; while each of the 12 episodes has at least eight scenes that can be posted to Facebook.

And there are incentives – the more a fan watches and interacts, the more virtual gifts they can earn (and of course the more HBO gets its marketing message across).

It’s clever stuff – getting your consumers to do a lot of your marketing legwork.

And consumers can not only post from their Blu-ray-enabled computer, but from their PlayStation 3. The latter point is significant in that many people buy the PS3 not for gaming, but because it’s one of the best quality competitively priced Blu-ray players on the market. It’s also wifi enabled, unlike a lot of players.

Just why someone who hadn’t watched the show would want to read spoilers for or trite observations on such a critically acclaimed series as one of their mates revels in its plot developments is beyond me, but then I guess I’m something of a cynical late-30-something luddite.

Sofia Chang, senior vice president of marketing for HBO video, says: “Our ‘True Blood’ fans are so active on Facebook that it made a lot of sense to connect BD Live to Facebook.

“By providing such a robust experience as we did on ‘True Blood’ Live Feed, we engage those fans on a deeper and personalised level while simultaneously allowing them to share it all with their friends.” I love it that you never find marketing people talking about what’s in it for them.

Putting the consumer to one side, and most pertinently – as far as HBO, the Blu-ray distributor and their marketing people are concerned this is a really neat way of getting  punters to do your marketing for you. Perhaps they should pay commissions to the most effective of tweets or Facebook posts.

The disc contains other functions too. While watching, users can decide which ‘True Blood’ group they wish to join, including Vampire, Fellowship of the Sun and Follower of Dionysus; while fans can use a picture of themselves that is doctored according to which group they join, and becomes paler and more bloodied the longer they watch.

However, as a consumer, I have a problem with this. A big one. The concept to me is anathema – when I watch something I just want to watch it – no distractions, no whooping at narrative climaxes, no popcorn and certainly no tapping away at a keyboard… you know, just soak up the atmosphere and fall entirely victim to the conceit. But then that’s me.

The reality is that there are a lot of obsessive social media types out there who tell the world their most trivial thoughts and asides. So when it comes to watching as brilliant a show as ‘True Blood’, no one’s going to be able to shut them up. And that’s great ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing.

The ‘True Blood’ Blu-ray went on sale in the States this month.