The Twitter Effect On Movies

There was a time not so very long ago when to know how good or bad a movie was in order to decide whether to go and see it at the cinema required the buying of a newspaper or magazine in order to read the latest movie reviews.

Then along came the Internet and the process got much easier. Web sites such as the one you are reading right now started posting reviews you could read quickly and for free. And then there was IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes which opened the market up even more and allowed everyone to have a say.

And now there are social networking sites such as MySpace and Twitter, which give people an instant chance to share their views on a movie release with their friends and family. And Twitter is probably the most useful in this sense.

As discussed in depth in this Baltimore Sun article, Twitter is starting to have a real effect on box-office takings. It gives people all over the world the chance to tell their followers what they think of the movie they’ve just seen, sometimes even before they’ve left the cinema. And all in 140-characters or less.

Real examples of this effect in action are given, with the drops in takings experienced by both Bruno and G.I. Joe cited. While Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen continued to do well beyond its first week despite poor critical reviews because the mainstream public liked it and said as much on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social networks they belong to.

I don’t think film critics and reviewers should worry quite yet because there is still a need for an unbiased critical look at each release. But it’s clear that public opinion is going to become more important in years to come, with word of mouth reviews easier to come by than ever before.