There used to be a time not so long ago, about two or three years, that motion picture distributors made many of their decisions about release patterns based on a weekly report produced by one third-party company; National Research Group. The company, founded in 1978, became a de-facto standard for market research within the film industry, especially when it came to test screenings and determining a movie’s release date. Today, thanks to the Internet, much of the work NRG does by polling potential moviegoers about their awareness of upcoming releases can be conducted in real time using websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Earlier this week while checking my Twitter timeline I noticed that a lot of the people I follow on the micro-blogging site were posting messages about Warner Bros. tent pole release, “Watchmen”. This wasn’t so surprising since I follow a lot of entertainment journalists and film industry professionals and the movie was opening in just a few days. However I wondered how many other people were posting 140 character messages about the film. A quick query “Watchmen” on Twitter’s search page proved to be a wonderful example at how effective the service can be in providing an instant read on whether people were aware of the movie and what they were saying about it. The following screenshot was taken on Tuesday morning:
Not only were the site’s users talking about “Watchmen”, but it was the number one topic found in posts on Twitter, as can be seen in the Trending Topics section on the right hand side of the page. What makes this even more meaningful is that Twitter has millions of daily users posting tens-of-millions of messages 24-hours per day. For a topic to reach the top of the trending list on the search page is no easy task. Read More
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