Facebook and Twitter greatly influence box office sales of moviemaking industry

 Social networking sites are increasingly playing more important role from day to day widening the range of opportunities they can offer to businesses including both online and offline ones. Moviemaking industry has recently realized how significant may turn the opinion of users who post messages on such websites like Facebook and Twitter. And of late these companies has begun relying on social networks to gauge popular buzz on movies even before they come out. Thereby, social networking sites are effectively ousting the role of mighty film critics and detailed surveys.

While there is an increasing demand for estimating the reaction of ordinary people to the new film offerings there is an offer on the part of companies who create tools that both monitor and analyze buzz on social networking sites. One such company Fizziology that was created by Bradley and Montgomery, puts out a weekly chart showing which movies are getting people talking.

Thus, buzz is the amount of chatter or interest in a movie, which can increase awareness of the film and help drive box office sales. Previously, most movie making companies relied on focus groups, audience surveys and reviews by film critics so as to assess the financial efficiency of their films.

But lately they understood that online talking may have sometimes even greater influence on the box office sales. Thus, for instance, in July theaters were showing comedy "Bruno" which suffered a sharper than usual box office drop after its opening following negative comments by individuals on websites like Twitter and Facebook. 
On the other hand two days before the Paramount Pictures release "Paranormal Activity" opened in 160 movie theaters, the Fizziology web chart showed it was generating more online buzz than such highly anticipated films as November's "Twilight" sequel "New Moon," and that people were saying good things.

According to Christine Birch, president of marketing at DreamWorks Studios, today marketers are paying more serious attention to what average moviegoers say on the Internet. For example, a research firm Interpret found that 74% of Twitter users have seen a movie in the theater in the past six months while the percentage of general population who visited the theaters made up 60%.