Before You Head To The Theater, See What People Are Saying Online

Critics might have great opinions and your friend’s might spout off their own views, but the best way to get a sense of how people feel about a movie is by checking out what the masses are saying. Thanks to SocialGuide’s new social movie guide, you can see what people are tweeting and posting about that flick you were about to check out.

“What we found is there’s thousands and thousands of movie goers that are anticipating a movie, and it’s interesting to see that buzz,” Sean Casey, CEO and founder of SocialGuide, told What’s Trending. “And, the movies that are actually in theaters there are viewers out there expressing an opinion.”

Just like their television section, SocialGuide uses data from Tribune Media Services and inputs it into their own analytics system to show you how much of the online world is chatting about the movie you’re interested in and what they are saying. The start tracking a movie as soon as it appears on their radar, which is usually three or four weeks in advance of release and throughout its theatrical showing. They’ve been tracking movies since May, but only launched the beta version of their site a few weeks ago. They hope to release the full version by the middle of October.

SocialGuide then features social media mentions you probably missed, from the most retweeted sentiments to what celebrities and other social media influencers are saying online about the film “who let you know a funny or clever opinion in 140 characters.” While they don’t identify sentiment, in their experience the more people are talking about a movie, chances are it’s pretty good. “Consumers are much more apt to be more social when a movie is positive than when a movie is negative,” Casey explained.

Casey brings up the example of the recent movie “The Help.” The move opened moderately in the box office, but after a strong word of mouth online the film was able to retain the top box office spot for weeks. Casey is certain that social media’s power, through positive retweets and encouragements from tweeters to get their friends and family to check the film out is what lead to “The Help’s” success.

“(Social media) is the voice of the consumer, and I think it matters both to the industry and to the consumer,” he said. “To the industry we’re providing another metric to gauge a movie’s health. The amount of buzz a movie gets as it hits theaters is a good metric to see how well a movie will do in the box office, and we think there’s a correlation there.”