Twitter Strikes at the Box Office

The Washington Post has an article today suggesting that Twitter is changing box office dynamics. In the past, apparently, a big advertizing campaign could draw people to a movie for several days before viewer opinion caught up with the hype. Now the twitter-generation tweets from the theater as they watch the film, and word of tweet spreads like wildfire. Not only do some expected successes fail, but some good but modest films may turn blockbuster.

The pace of information dissemination keeps increasing. Once it moved only at the speed of a running horse or man. At the time of the American Revolution, it would take weeks for news from the Americas to reach Europe and the reaction to make it back across the ocean in sailing ships.

I find Twitter an amazingly helpful tool in keeping track of the public impact of news releases on UNESCO, making use of TweetLater's aggregation service. I also find out things I would otherwise never discover via the UNESCO tweets!