SHREDnews

Enter The Twittersphere

By: Emily Kaufman

Whether you love it or hate it, Twitter definitely has its pros. The founder Jack Dorsey had grown interested in the simple idea of being able to know what his friends were doing, which brought up the thought of there being an opportunity to build something compelling around this simple status concept. This opportunity was taken and turned into what we now know as Twitter. With more people creating accounts every day, Twitter has grown into a huge phenomenon.

From celebrities to your close friends to President Obama, there are so many people one can follow on Twitter. Celebrities and band members have been taking advantage of Twitter and using it to get closer to their fans. Using instant communication of 160 characters or less, celebrities such as Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 and Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy have found a way to do big things with such limitations. The two tweeted hints and locations of the Mark Hoppus/Fall Out Boy collaboration flash drives throughout the month of May. With a limited supply of a rumored 100 drives made, following “@markhoppus” and “@petewentz” was crucial in order to retrieve the hidden flash drives. Twitter is not only used by celebrities to give away cool stuff, but to keep in touch with fans. Most recently, Disney Channel star Mitchel Musso has been using Twitter to answer questions sent in by his fans, despite the fact that he has 252,000-plus followers. He often gives shout outs to his fans via Twitter, helping to close the gap between the famous and their fans.

The rapid pace of the world of Twitter isn’t all good though. The “Twitter Box Office Effect” is the biggest proof of the downside of “tweeting”. Until very recently, movie studios judged the success of their big pictures by how much they grossed on the opening weekend. In the age of Twitter, electronic word-of-mouth is immediate, as early moviegoers “tweet” their opinions on a film to millions of “followers.” Instant-messaging can make or break a film within 24 hours. Friday is the now the new weekend. The first film to be affected dramatically by the “Twitter Effect” was Sacha Baron Cohen’s Brüno. The docu-comedy about an Austrian fashion journalist who shoves his flamboyant gayness in the faces and other body parts of unsuspecting Americans exceeded expectations by bringing in $30.4 million in its first weekend. The film’s box-office decline from Friday to Saturday indicates that the film’s brand of outrage was not the sort to please most moviegoers and with the help of Twitter, word got around fast. Brüno may have been the first movie defeated by the Twitter Effect, but more are sure to come.