Twitter tracks Fashion Week

Twitter has launched a microsite -- the Twitter Event Hub -- tracking New York's Fashion Week. The site, which launched late last week, is sponsored by American Express with original content and aggregated news from fashion industry partners.

Publishers, with their large Twitter followings, are providing much of the content. Women's Wear Daily (over 1.6 million followers) and Modelinia (over 124,000 followers) provide the runway and party coverage (example from WWD: "Courtney Love just got to the Chanel dinner"). The Daily Recap of top trends and emerging themes is handled by Bergdorf Goodman (15,735 followers). Beauty, makeup and hair styling tips are covered by several brands: AskBobbyBrown, Aveda, BumbleandBumble and Smashboxartists.

Could this be the beginning of a trend with Twitter during major events? We got a taste of this possible future of where Twitter might be going with live-event social networking with their World Cup site back in June. Twitter used live widgets, real-time search, staff picks and Top Tweet updates to successfully cover macho World Cup soccer, the polar opposite of New York's elegant Fashion Week.

But what fashion lacks in global muscularity, it more than makes up for in soft power and desirable demographics in the media capital of the world. Fashionably Marketing's Macala Wright cleverly used Biz360's Community platform as a social media monitoring tool for clients and fashion industry trends during Fall 2010's Fashion Week. In doing so, Wright found that 45% of the participants during February's New York Fashion Week used Twitter to discuss events surrounding the runway shows.

Further, Wright found that New York magazine's the CUT blog and Coutorture (which is now in Fashionologie) were the main fashion week news sources in the Fashion Week social conversations, blowing away legacy fashion media like Vogue and WWD. "53% of the coverage came from online articles and blog posts occurring between 2/13/2010 to 2/20/2010. As magazines posted photos and commentary of shows, bloggers were hot on the heels, reblogging, writing and linking to photos and trend information as they were released," Wright wrote at FashionablyMarketing.

Since the World Cup in all its hashflagged glory, we have also seen the explosion of location based social media sites like Foursquare, Gowalla and, of late, Facebook. They have already made an impact on Fashion Week and they will be in heavy use during tonight's New York Fashion Week, Fashion’s Night Out, which involves hundreds of stores and events and celebrities all over the city. Style Rookie Tavi Gevinson (12,010 followers), who shocked the industry last year as the buzziest 13-year-old fashion blogger, will be tweeting for Barney's New York all night (Does she have a bedtime?).

What is next for a Twitter live event social networking big push? The World Series (The official twitter of the Oct. 27 game has at post time a paltry 4,291 followers)? Davos (The World Economic Forum already has over 1.5 million followers)? The sky appears to be the limit depending on the success of Twitter's performance during Fashion Week.