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Google and Microsoft through Bing yesterday both announced the ability to search Twitter feeds in real time. I’m told this is potentially big news for entertainment product marketing. We all know Twitter has accelerated the velocity of word of mouth, but until now it could not really be searched efficiently. In the past, a text with commentary on a film went to one person. Now it goes to hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands. With Google’s and Bing’s offerings, studios and networks can capture and parse Twitter feeds to determine the sentiment of opening day attendees. They can then analyze the direct data to know how it is trending, and metadata to determine regional, theater and demographic data all within minutes of the film opening. If they choose to do so — as Comcast is doing on Twitter — they can participate in real time dialogue. Of course, the same thing can be applied to test screenings and focus groups to hear what people are saying to their friends, as opposed to what they write on the movie cards. A marketing revolution/solution is underway.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Even Big Brother wants to be in the film business.
I’ve heard what he really wants to do is direct.
Not everybody has Twitter geniuses…
Sorry. No solution. Twitter sucks. It is like everyone talking same time. Like CB Radio and no one listening anymore… but if you want, you can watch your favorite episode of whatever, and talk about it with whomever on your laptop. And when someone ref to you, you know your not alone. Will make you happy. But no. It sucks. Too much mediocre stuff. Like this here. I mean my comment. Ok. I shorten it to twitter length:
#deadline #hollywood #showbiz #revolution #solution #realtimefeed @nikki : Sorry, twitter sucks.
maybe i am crazy, but i do not think that twitter is here to stay. facebook feels like it has longevity but twitter feels like a fad…
Great point. Realtime feedback means better movies make more money, and worse movies trail off more quickly.
No…they could have been playing with the Twitter API all along. There are plenty of options to search and parse Twitter data. This is just a bonus for Google and Bing to mash the search results together.
Less of a revolution than you think, Nikki. Parsing Twitter feeds can alert studios that audiences hate or love or are indifferent to a movie, but they cannot change the content and even test screenings (which were heavily analyzed anyway) allow only minor tweakings of an essentially finished product.
What does have the ability to change things is interactive forums, mining of Twitter feeds, and so on for TV series. This has been a part of production life for savvy producers since Babylon 5 and J Michael Stracynski carefully analyzed fan reaction on various websites and Usenet. So it’s at least 16 years old or so.
TV, being cheap and “fast” enough can change to “fix” things that are not working, and emphasize things fans like (characters, themes, plot hooks or devices). Moreover, fans being more passionate about long-term characters than simple “event” effects-based movies, are more likely to say “why” characters, plot points, themes, and the like work or do not work for them.
Mining Twitter feeds is not the holy grail for movie makers, it won’t address piracy and cheap rentals eroding DVD revenue, declining box office attendance, failure of “stars” to put people in seats, and a vast social gulf between the creative people and their audience leading to general cluelessness about what the audience wants. At best it can help studios avoid sinking more marketing resources in dogs and help push sleepers, but it is a marginal improvement.
Not really. Who cares about knowing how audiences react to a film on the day it opens? Marketers need to know weeks or months in advance, if it is to be used to guide, say, the tone of a campaign.
Big Brother at work again!
“until now it could not really be searched efficiently.”
Not entirely accurate, Twitter has a number of efficient search mechanisms: search.twitter.com, typing something into the search box right next to your username or using any number of the twitter esktop applications – nearly all of which have real-time search functionality. Any one of them gives you results within about 10 seconds of initial posting.
All the Google and Microsoft deals do is allow them real-time access to the Twitter datastream – negating the previous necessity to take the time/energy/computing power to index them like Google must do for the rest of the web. So Google and Microsoft are paying a lot of money to make their searches more efficient and timely by getting results from Twitter’s already existing search functionality.
The problem then lies in the fact that while the studio may now be able to find out what attendees thought of the film, prospective audience members can do the same. So while the studio may be more educated in it’s marketing efforts, the ability to make the film seem different than it is will be severely diminished. Overall, the ability of Twitter to determine trends may turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help.
I’m not convinced this is a “revolution” unless they have the ability to respond to that information in a meaningful way – especially in the case of moviegoers who have already seen the movie and are tweeting microreviews to their friends. Sure, it would be nice to know the minute it happens, but what can you do about it? Send them tweets back trying to persuade them it was better than what they just said? In the absence of an ability to effect immediate action, realtime dialogue has no appreciable difference with delayed-time dialogue (e.g. message boards) unless the dialogue itself is valued by the consumer.
Information by itself is not useful. Applying that information is. I would be interested if Google/MSoft implemented this feature with a proposition of how it could be used, or whether it was “Hey, let’s see if anyone likes this”.
This sounds like a really healthy development. Perhaps also we can have real time brain scanning to go along with it, or maybe in utero gene therapy to maximize receptiveness to particular brands. Perhaps we could be fitted with robot power suits that would walk us to movie theaters against our will and force us to buy tickets and watch transformers 8.
In seriousness – this story underlines the most disappointing/overlooked feature of online social networking, which is that for all of the talk about how it is revolutionizing human interaction and social movements and ‘culture’ and so forth, at the center of it sites like facebook (and now apparently twitter) are basically just about getting consumers to volunteer marketing/demographic information. This is the business model, yes? So, sure, share your movie trailers and youtube links on facebook and broadcast your take on memes on twitter and enjoy the fuzzy, glowy little lifeworld these services offer, but also realize that while doing these things you’re also effectively performing huge amounts of free labor, offering marketers who will pay for it all the information on you and your demographic they might want.
Anybody remember that awful show MaxHeadroom? This sounds so much like it. They had instant data on audience and would cancel a tv show immediately if it fell too low. I’d hate to be a movie relying on a slow buildup.
Of course, they could also just make better movies.
And I thought Big Brother was only watching us thru TV. Boy was I wrong.
1984 is returning with a vengeance!
So, while the studio’s marketing division is seeking out Twitter as a bona fide and useful resource, business affairs is dropping the hammer on cast (and could crew be far behind?) and barring talent from using Twitter to announce or comment on their upcoming or ongoing deals or projects. Revolution meet counter revolution.
Nikki,
Several firms exist that provide some type of “social media analytics” that search and then analyze comments from twitter, facebook, blog posts and other sites. The technology is fast developing but still incomplete.
Yes, if a picture is a “bomb” then word will spread faster if the target audience are social media users. However, for the majority of the population who are not yet social media users/consumers..hollywood will need to know their views by more traditional means.
As other posters have commented, what Hollywood does with the information, conclusions formed and actions taken..well that is the question.
If research had indicated that audiences could did not care about the Iraq war (other than it seemed to be a waste of money and lives..) why did the studios make so many pictures critical of the war. Nobody came to see them..if twitter comments had said we don’t care ..would that have changed the studio’s decision process.
Social media analytics can provide great detail about who is saying what..but information have to be used effectively.
Utter rubbish !! These people have no way to amalgamate twitter feeds into anything meaningful. Period.