Moviegoers Not Affected By Twitter Buzz

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 12, 2009 Share

Twitter

The folks at MovieTickets.com sent over a very interesting little bit of poll information today, tying in the popular social media platform Twitter with mainstream moviegoers. They asked their users the following question: Does buzz on social media platform Twitter.com affect your desire to see a film?

The results were as follows:

  1. No (58%)
  2. Yes (12%)
  3. What’s Twitter (30%)

Of course, before we really get into a big discussion about this, it is important to note that this poll is based on just over 1,100 votes. But it does represent a segment of internet-using movie fans, as MovieTickets.com is one of the larger ticket sales websites, and could be representative of larger segments of society. That said, I’m not surprised that almost 1/3 of users asked ‘What’s Twitter?’

If you do the math, the last census showed that about 72% of the population in the United States uses the internet (some 220 million people). In 2009, industry estimates place the user base of Twitter in the 10 to 15 million range. That means that even with a generous estimated user count, Twitter is only utilized by 6.8% of all internet users and less than 5% of all Americans.

Now, some movie-related data. So far in it’s run, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (a movie that got beat to hell on Twitter) has made $394,446,105 at the domestic box office. The average price of a movie ticket, according to a NATO survey, is $7.18. That means that on average, about 55 million people saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. That is, for those keeping score, more than 3x the amount of people that are on Twitter. Of course, this doesn’t take into consideration people that saw the movie multiple times, but you get the idea — it is impressive, either way.

So of course, while I love to use Twitter (follow me: @rejects) and I love to spread my own movie-related opinions and discuss all things film with my fellow Tweeters, the social media platform isn’t ultimately relevant when it comes to the success or failure of a major motion picture. As my good friend Luke (@ldmullen) said earlier today here at Reject HQ, Twitter is relevant to those who use it. Everyone else, well that’s another story.

Do you follow movie buzz on Twitter? Does it impact your decisions about which movies to see?

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  • This isn't surprising at all. The media has been crapping its pants over how awesome Twitter is for the past couple of months, which makes it seem like a bigger deal than it really is. In reality, the median amount of tweets by Twitter users is...1. That means the solid majority of people who join abandon it immediately. That didn't happen with previous phenomenons like Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace.
  • jordanlamb
    Just an opinion I would like to add to this discussion.
    When you say that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen "got beat to hell on Twitter" I'm assuming you mean by the critic realm.
    I just want to point out that even if the critic world bashes a movie it doesn't mean that the general public will heed their warning. Same goes with any social media platform. Under the assumption that someone does actually follow (Twitter), or fan (Facebook) a movie reviewer, the weight they give to a film reviewer isn't nearly as heavy as the weight they will give to the people in their everyday lives.
  • Cole_Abaius
    Twitter suffers from the same as-yet-unnamed phenomenon that hits a lot of technological fads. Early adopters believe concomitantly that they are somehow unique for being first to use something and that the platform that they use is highly influential on the populace as a whole. These two concepts are contradictory, but the feelings seem to crop up for a lot of things: uniqueness and mass influence.

    The heavy users for Twitter are also within the tech bubble world that makes Twitter seem much, much larger than it actually is.

    But movie critics already extrapolate their importance and influence to the breaking point, so I'm not surprised that some would feel their tweets carry water when no one really cares all that much.
  • silent_jay
    these arent actual stats, just opinion, but i reckon of all the people that signed up for twitter, the *actual* twitter users is probably only 10% of those that signed up because of hype, and of that 10%, very few have something to say, and an even smaller amount has any significant amount of followers

    twitter aint goin to sway many people to or from a movie, even tho the studios like to blame it for low turn outs to their films
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