The Beta News » Twitter

Is Twitter Killing Hollywood Movies? I Say No

Dennis Bjørn Petersen — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:41:45 +0000

Over the summer we’ve seen a bunch of presumed blockbusters falter after their opening weekends. Brüno was no success (if you’ve seen Borat, you’ve seen Brüno), Duplicity with Julia Roberts cost $60 million to make, but made only $40 million in the US. Land of the Lost, Will Ferrell’s $100 million adventure-comedy, made $49 million in the US. Funny People and Public Enemies also disappointed at the box office.

Former chairman of Sony Pictures, Peter Gruber told New York Post:

“You look around the theatre and can see the glow, not on people’s faces from watching the movie, but on their chins – from the BlackBerrys and iPhones. They are immediately telling their friends whether it’s worth their time. And the answer to that, more often than not, seems to be no.”

The movie business is obviously afraid of a merely 140 characters and perhaps with a good reason. Before the end credits are done rolling I can tell my tweeps if I recommend the movie or not.

So what does this mean for the movie industry? Make better movies. Now it doesn’t take a week or two before the word about a bad movie spreads, it takes a few hours on Twitter.

Have you avoided a movie because someone on Twitter said it was bad? Do you think Twitter is killing Hollywood?

Update: Dan at minute44.com has some really good points.

Source: Daily Telegraph

Twittermania 8 New Twitter Services

Dennis Bjørn Petersen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:09:20 +0000

The twittermania continues. “Every time a bell rings, a new twitter service gets it’s wings” – You may use this quote freely.

It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the new twitter services that are constantly launched. I’ve created a list of the most recent services.

The list goes from Tweetmarks and spamplets to Hiimok and HappyTwitDay.

The list is completely random and I’ll let you be the judge which of these services are the most useful.

Tweetmarks is a bookmarks tool for Twitter. Tweetmarks is a combination of bookmarking and twitter. It stores and tracks all the bookmarks you share on twitter. It can even synchronize with your del.icio.us account.
Share your funny or strange email spam on Spamlets. Simply start any tweet with #spamlet
and it’ll show up on Spamlet.com.
Good-looking plain text-backchannels with TwitterFountain. TwitterFountain mash-up tweets and Flickr images based on tags into one animation. An example could be “Obama”. You will see all the tweets about Obama with matching images from Flickr in the background.
Send gifts to your twitter friends with hiimok. A tweet with a link to the gift will be sent to your friend. The gift could be an icon of a cooler filled with beer.
Queue up your tweets with Twitabit. If/when twitter is down, you can still tweet using Twitabit. Once twitter is back up, your tweets are delivered.
Twizon is mash-up between twitter and Amazon. This service is probably for shopaholics. Twizon lists all the tweets referencing Amazon deals.
Keep track your friends’ birthdays using HappyTwitDay. Using Summize.com HappyTwitday searches the twitterati for Happy Birthday-wishes. Follow HappyTwitDay on twitter to keep track.
Chirrup adds twitter chat to your blog’s comments. Using Javascript and PHP Chirrup pulls your twitter replies into your blog’s comment feed.

I bet a bunch of new twitter services has been launched while I was writing this post, but the above mentioned as some of the newest ones.

I didn’t say they where all useful, but let me know if I missed anyone.

What’s your favourite twitter service?

Twitter Alternatives – Plurk Or Pownce

Dennis Bjørn Petersen — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:44:16 +0000

It’s no surprise that twitter can be a bit unstable from time to time. Twitter is probably the only service I know that’s almost more down than it’s up, and still have a loyal fan base and increase it’s number of users.

But what are the alternatives?

There are a lot of similar micro-blogging services out there, but can they replace twitter?

If you take a look at the various alternatives to twitter are they really an alternative?

Pownce:

About a year ago I wrote a post about Pownce and twitter. I compare the two services, but what really hit me was, that a year ago I wrote that twitter is unstable.

Twitter is still unstable and Pownce hasn’t replaced twitter. Why is that?

Pownce doesn’t have the simplicity of twitter. No one (except a few) has really bothered making any services for Pownce either and perhaps Pownce is just too feature-heavy?!

As always you are welcome to friend me on Pownce.

Plurk:

The brand new microblogging tool is called Plurk and everybody are talking/blogging about it. It’s probably the closest thing at the moment to twitter.

The timeline is very different and takes a little getting-used-to. However when some of your friends plurk, you can respond directly to their plurks by just clicking on it.

Plurk has a clever little extra thing that might be addicting to some users. It’s called Karma. It’s a score and the more you plurk, respong to plurks and add friends, the more Karma you get.

All the big blogger people are plurking. If they like it might breakthrough. Perhaps they should have waited and launched Plurk at some big blogger conference. That’s what twitter and Friendfeed did.

Add me as a friend on Plurk.

Some might also see Friendfeed as an alternative to twitter, but honestly I haven’t really jumped on the Friendfeed bandwagon yet.

I’m still not sure what to do with Friendfeed, but I would love to know, so if you have any advice or ideas, please don’t hesitate to share.

Which tool do you see as an alternative to twitter? Will you stick with twitter or move to another microblogging service?

A Day In The Life Of Twitter

Dennis Bjørn Petersen — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:15:16 +0000

This is only my second video, so please be gentle.

Using summize.com I’ve gathered some of the tweets from desperate, disappointed or even angry twitterers after twitter.com’s nasty downtime last Wednesday.

Which program and on which hardware I made the video is not important, at least not now, but it’s a part of my quest for the Apple.

Of course, this could also be Robert Scoble and other twitter super users (Fake Steve Jobs calls them twittertards) fault. I doubt it though. They just need a solid backbone and some better infrastructure.

I say that without knowing what their problem is, but my guess is just as good as blaming someone else.

Anyhoo I just wanted to show you this little video I made the other day. I’ve uploaded it to Viddler and YouTube.
The song is Alana Taylor’s Twitter Song. Thank you very much for letting me use it.

Twitter Updates for 2008-03-31

Dennis Bjørn Petersen — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:59:59 +0000

Last day @ my old job is over. Had to return my laptop :-/ Anyone happening to travel to Denmark from the US? I need a new laptop #
If you haven’t seen the TV Spot for Indiana Jones IV then see it here: http://tinyurl.com/3x5nsw/3/v33 #
Celebrating 10 years of Mozilla today. 10 years already…Time flies…sometimes http://www.mozilla.org/ #
@chrisbrogan That’s not true…I can read…hmmm…. #
WP 2.5 automated plugin update. Is that a tear in my eye..?! #

Twitter Updates for 2008-03-05

Dennis Bjørn Petersen — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:59:59 +0000

@duncanriley lol what a hilarious site. Who comes up with this?! #
@lisabettany Is this bunny pic something that requires you to send me a link? #
RIP Gary Gygax. I didn’t know that until I saw the latest lolcats. What a way to find out… #
Free wbebrowser for Nintendo Wii http://www.wiibrowser.com/ #
Finally a search engine for beer lovers http://www.beerinfo.us/ #
Checking my Facebook application invitations. 189 ignores later..Oh there is a ignore all-button /joke #
If I were to buy a Mac Notebook in the US. In which store should I buy it? BestBuy? Electric City? Apple Store? #
@byosko Hang in there Ben! You’ve had a very busy time so far. Surely there must be some light ahead #
@byosko Ohh…Cold coffee. Then I can’t blame you. That’s a tough one. Perhaps you should buy one of these USB-coffee cup warmers #
12,3 Gb files on my HDD I didn’t know about. There is nothing like getting extra HDD space #
Thank you very much for the link love @andybeal http://snurl.com/211i1 #
@eMom Sounds really interesting. Can you reveal a bit about the blogs? #
@JenniferLaycock You got it. I’ll go vote again. It’s a tough one to vote for though. Why not pay them all #
@searchforchris Yes I am. I’ve been a member a year now! #
@shoemoney I’m glad you finally like twitter and that you could be persuaded to try it again. How’s it working for you? #
@shoemoney I think it’s important you find a good program. If twitterific is your thing then stick with it. I use twhirl. That’s a good alt. #
@wilw It’s kinda funny. Democrats are pretty close to our liberal/conservative party. Republican is too far right. Noone is that extreme #
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is now available http://snurl.com/211zl #
Don’t worry. I use Flock and Firefox. I just can’t help it. I’m curious. I have to see how IE8 works #
Can anyone recommend a good twitter plugin for WP? I would like to gather all my daily twits in one post. #
20 mins. left. Looks like Real Madrid is out of Champions League #
Hmm Real just equalised. This is thrilling 15 mins. left….C’mon Real!!! #
Why the heck can Real play football (soccer) when it really counts… #
That’s it for today. Good night! #

Twitter Updates for 2008-03-05

Dennis Bjørn Petersen — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:59:59 +0000

@duncanriley lol what a hilarious site. Who comes up with this?! #
@lisabettany Is this bunny pic something that requires you to send me a link? #
RIP Gary Gygax. I didn’t know that until I saw the latest lolcats. What a way to find out… #
Free wbebrowser for Nintendo Wii http://www.wiibrowser.com/ #
Finally a search engine for beer lovers http://www.beerinfo.us/ #
Checking my Facebook application invitations. 189 ignores later..Oh there is a ignore all-button /joke #
If I were to buy a Mac Notebook in the US. In which store should I buy it? BestBuy? Electric City? Apple Store? #
@byosko Hang in there Ben! You’ve had a very busy time so far. Surely there must be some light ahead #
@byosko Ohh…Cold coffee. Then I can’t blame you. That’s a tough one. Perhaps you should buy one of these USB-coffee cup warmers #
12,3 Gb files on my HDD I didn’t know about. There is nothing like getting extra HDD space #
Thank you very much for the link love @andybeal http://snurl.com/211i1 #
@eMom Sounds really interesting. Can you reveal a bit about the blogs? #
@JenniferLaycock You got it. I’ll go vote again. It’s a tough one to vote for though. Why not pay them all #
@searchforchris Yes I am. I’ve been a member a year now! #
@shoemoney I’m glad you finally like twitter and that you could be persuaded to try it again. How’s it working for you? #
@shoemoney I think it’s important you find a good program. If twitterific is your thing then stick with it. I use twhirl. That’s a good alt. #
@wilw It’s kinda funny. Democrats are pretty close to our liberal/conservative party. Republican is too far right. Noone is that extreme #
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is now available http://snurl.com/211zl #
Don’t worry. I use Flock and Firefox. I just can’t help it. I’m curious. I have to see how IE8 works #
Can anyone recommend a good twitter plugin for WP? I would like to gather all my daily twits in one post. #
20 mins. left. Looks like Real Madrid is out of Champions League #
Hmm Real just equalised. This is thrilling 15 mins. left….C’mon Real!!! #
Why the heck can Real play football (soccer) when it really counts… #
That’s it for today. Good night! #