Here is the top of Simon Dumenco’s The Most Tweeted Brands of the Week Chart:
#2 and #4 happened to be the #9 and #10 films of this last weekend.
Twitter trends tell you.. what is trending on Twitter.
It’s nice to be talked about. Both films had $5m+ weekends. But both would prefer to have the $12m+ of Vampires Suck or The Expendables than to e trending so well on Twitter. Ya?
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Problems with “Twitter trending” (which I’d LOVE to see someone solve – I believe Twitter can be awesome, but the signal:noise ratio is currently terrible):
* No context – trending picks up key words but doesn’t tell you whether people are saying something positive/negative/neutral about the topic. Some Twitter consultants make an attempt to clarify this but the problem is exacerbated by the 140 character limit, causing people to get creative with their typing and confounding automated positive/negative algorithms.
* Doesn’t tell you who is talking – getting lots of people talking about you can be great. Getting new audiences can be even better. Trending doesn’t tell you if it’s the same 500 “movie geeks” tweeting about you over and over, or whether it’s 5000 “mainstream audience members” joining in (so you know you’re starting to break out beyond the base). If you’re someone like Abercrombie & Fitch, you don’t give a shit if a bunch of hippies are complaining about your latest ad campaign – your whole brand image revolves around saying “we don’t want YOU” to people who don’t match the target profile.
* Doesn’t tell you who is listening – the flip side of “who is talking?”. Is anyone actually reading the tweets or are they all just talking to their audience of one? If people are reading, are they responding to tweets or clicking on the bit.ly links? Or are they too preoccupied with their own tweets to pay attention to anyone else?
* Spam – people dropping meaningless trending keywords in an attempt to get people to click on their links. Just plain noise, but still contributes to trending statistics.
I’d love for someone to solve these problems, improve the signal:noise ratio, and help people understand if their tweets are having a meaningful impact.
I’m still of the firm opinion that Twitter is one of those web media things that in a year or two will have people scratching their heads wondering what all the fuss was about. Like Friendster and what not.
Friendster? Was that the app where you could let your friends know when you’re drinking Crystal Pepsi?
Then again, no one got a sitcom starring William Shatner out of their Friendster account.
How many people check to see what’s trending to help them decide what movie they want to watch? You can have a core of die hard fans tweeting and that doesn’t mean anything to the average movie goer. Word of mouth still means word from friends. Someone who wants to get a consensus opinion will just head off to Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes.
i still don’t understand or see the point of twitter. “i’m eating a sandwich and then i’m going to have a shower”. who fucking cares? this whole having tell people every little thought or thing you do is so perverse, seemingly part and parcel with the reality TV sickness infecting popular culture — it’s like some bizarro-world reverse ‘1984’ syndrome, where instead of having big brother forced upon the population and watching/listening to everything one does/says, people are VOLUNTARILY giving their lives over to big brother one step at a time. or maybe i’m just paranoid and it’s all harmless fun. it doesn’t feel that way tho, it feel like a slippery slope.
The “point” of Twitter is that it’s incredibly powerful as a LISTENING tool – the @Name and #Topic functions make it incredibly easy to find out when people are talking about you specifically or something you’re interested in.
The problem of Twitter is that it’s being used as a SHOUTING tool – people are attempting to use it to broadcast to the world in general rather than engage in meaningful exchanges. Hence the thousands of “I just pooped hur hur” tweets.
It’s a tool with plenty of potential, being hindered by the lack of accurate analytics and the tendency for people to be self-absorbed douchebags.
What leah said. More white noise-info pollution.
They’re not ex-boyfriends. They’re exes. I guess nobody really did see the movie!
foamy — is there a reliable tutorial or ‘twitter for dummies’ that you know of? i’m desperately in need of some schoolin’….
“But both would prefer to have the $12m+ of Vampires Suck or The Expendables than to e trending so well on Twitter. Ya?”
Sure but if you look at the twitter trending as more of a lens on lasting cultural impact I’d be willing to guess that in 5 years inception and Scott Pilgrim will have far more shelf lifes than the expendables or vampires suck.
the $12m+ of those films was likely generated from cultural consumers, not creators.
twitter still weighs towards being a medium of cultural creators. eating a sandwich or not, twitter is a potent information sharing tool
…and yet there’s little to no evidence of that being the case.
4 years down the track and does Ashton Kutcher have a more lasting cultural impact than that of his peers?
I’m totally a Twitter advocate, but jeez guys – it’s been running for years now, back this shit up with hard data. Not “I think in the future…” And as of this moment, no-one’s been able to demonstrate that twitter has translated into any kind of return on investment – monetary or otherwise. The best anyone’s been able to do is the Web 2.0 version of old media “press mentions”, which is itself a bullshit metric. “X had Twitter and X was successful” is correlation, not causation.
@scooterzz – I think Don Lewis is our resident Emily Post for Twitter best practice.
at least myspace launched a few people’s careers, though most were incredibly short lived.
twitter is nothing more than a way for celebrities to control their press. it gives opportunities for people to talk to their ‘fans’ without having to really interact with them.
Kevin Smith famously had a message board for years. Then facebook and twitter came along, and he changed his methods from ‘interactive’ to ‘declaratory statements’. twitters is great for celebs because they can just talk without having to engage in interactive conversations. twitter is a one way communication tool. like 140 character ‘at will’ press releases.
but it doesn’t matter. no matter how desperate people seem to declare it’s relevance. it doesn’t translate to box office, nor does it translate to ratings. it gives people like lindsay lohan a way to get covered by Extra and E News Daily without actually doing anything.
Twitter enables the hypsters who think it’s a barometer for the cultural pulse. It also enable worthless celebs a place to feel relevant.
sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I am a 35 year old professional from Pennsylvania that is internet addicted. I have never met a single person in real life that Twitters.
MySpace has produced some lasting careers – Lily Allen I think has fared the best of them (arguably Tila Tequila, but considering she just got feces flung at her while performing at an ICP concert I’m not sure that counts). It’s equally important to note that almost all of them migrated OFF myspace and onto traditional channels as soon as they hit the big time.
I’d agree that the current “holy grail” of PR is to give a semblance of “interactive” while really holding audiences at arms length (see: Paranormal Activity’s “petition” to expand its screens… after the screens had already been booked). It’s produced an incredibly embittered class of community managers who feel abused at having to be the punching bag for audiences who are promptly ignored.
It could really do with some solid testing to get a solid feel for what works:
– Do A/B testing between language groups, measure change between the groups when the only differing variable is the tweets.
– Provide statistics on the change in unique accounts tweeting/retweeting a topic. Provide statistics on the number of bit.ly clicks for a topic.
– Get data on where people are getting their referrals from, either from embedded link clicks or simply asking. Hell, the largest funeral directors chain asks callers where they heard about the service so they can track ad spend effectiveness – if they can ask grieving families where they saw the ad, so can ticket sellers.
I like the enthusiasm of twitter advocates, I just dislike how there’s a distinct lack discipline. I don’t care if you want to call it “social grooming” – it’s still informationless posting.
Quite a few of my friends are fans of “Scott Pilgrim” and I, too, have seen a lot of messages about that movie posted by them, especiaally AFTER they saw it.
I think that the important think to remember is that people like to talk about not just what they want to see, but what they already know. And when the later happens it’s more important to them than it is to everyone else.
Tim Heidecker’s tweets about the “Restoring Honor” thing in DC confirm that Twitter is the most important website in the universe
“confirm that Twitter is the most important website in the universe”
Only if you can’t get the same info elsewhere. Which we all can. Live 140 character bites over live reportage is no big substitute unless you think getting info solely from twitter is the only way. And it’s just not.
What Jason posted above and Black, uh no, Twitter is pure and unfettered information. It is the future of things and comparing it to Friendster or whatever, sort of ignores the power that Twitter represents. Seriously, it’s essentially the old guy in Tron come to life. If that makes any sense to you, I have no clue, because I have the flu and I am not in the mood for making sense.
Oh yeah Anghus… Inception. GAME SET MATCH… BOOYAH!
Twitter will be as relevant as myspace in a couple years. Something new and shinier will come along to replace this latest fad.
Yes IO, Inception trended and Inception was a hit… but if you flipped a coin for every movie that came out and predicted “hit” for a head and “flop” for tails, you’d still have “predicted” 2-3 of the big hits of the summer.
So far no-one’s been able to demonstrate that Twitter is statistically better at predicting mass market success than that coin – there’s just been too many times when stuff has trended and resulted in not a ripple in the marketplace. Don’t get me wrong, I think if you’re doing any kind of wide release – be it media, consumer goods, or services – you’d be kinda crazy not to consider Twitter as part of the marketing mix, but the numbers backing up its effectiveness just aren’t there. Or if they are, no-one’s published them in a convincing manner.