FlixPulse is sort of like Rotten Tomatoes. But instead of compiling average ratings from dozens of professional movie reviews, FlixPulse scans Twitter for mentions of current movies. Then real live human beings look at each tweet and decide whether the comment was good, bad, or indifferent. The result shows up as a percentage on the main page, and if you click on a movie title you can read the actual messages left by Twitter users.
The concept is kind of cool. But since most people probably don't realize that their remarks are being aggregated, it's not clear that random Twitter users are providing accurate reviews. Every movie on the front page of FlixPulse has a score well above 50%, which means that either every movie in theaters right now is awesome, or people are more likely to comment on films they liked.
[via Data Mining and The Net Savvy Executive]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-02-2008 @ 5:36PM
JazzyChad said...
Yes, the results seem a bit positive, and I added this disclaimer at the bottom of the page to that effect: "Some people have remarked that the reviews tend to skew to the positive. While it does appear that way, we categorize every tweet that comes in. We do not throw out bad or indifferent reviews. One possible explanation is that people generally try to remember the positive over the negative. They might think a movie was bad... but not bad enough to tweet about it. However, people are very quick to tweet about things they like. So, take it all with a grain of salt, and enjoy what other tweeters have to say."
I think another part of it is that people want to feel like they got their money's worth out of a $10 tickets, so they try to convince themselves it was worth it by remembering something good. If someone is really upset they obviously will tweet something bad (the bad reviews usually have much stronger adjectives in the negative direction). Also, with such a broad spectrum of people writing reviews, there are also varying shades of rose-colored lenses through which people watch the movies.
Real live movie-critics are paid to be cynical. Average movie-goers just want to have a good time.
Thanks for the write-up!
-JazzyChad
Reply
6-03-2008 @ 6:17AM
Jo Mama said...
When I first found this site it was a great place to discover new software and read about it. Now it seems to have turned into a crappy Twitter news site. Nearly every day posts seem to revolve around Twitter or some Twitter enhancer. Can't you come up with anything else or are you too busy tweeting.
Reply
6-03-2008 @ 6:30AM
Fred Thompson said...
This is a great idea but look at the results. How likely is it that all the current releases are great movies? Methinks this shows people are more likely to mention a movie they like than one they don't. Good execution, poor data set. Metacritic seems to have a better data set. Cool idea, though.
Reply
6-02-2008 @ 5:36PM
JazzyChad said...
Yes, the results seem a bit positive, and I added this disclaimer at the bottom of the page to that effect: "Some people have remarked that the reviews tend to skew to the positive. While it does appear that way, we categorize every tweet that comes in. We do not throw out bad or indifferent reviews. One possible explanation is that people generally try to remember the positive over the negative. They might think a movie was bad... but not bad enough to tweet about it. However, people are very quick to tweet about things they like. So, take it all with a grain of salt, and enjoy what other tweeters have to say."
I think another part of it is that people want to feel like they got their money's worth out of a $10 tickets, so they try to convince themselves it was worth it by remembering something good. If someone is really upset they obviously will tweet something bad (the bad reviews usually have much stronger adjectives in the negative direction). Also, with such a broad spectrum of people writing reviews, there are also varying shades of rose-colored lenses through which people watch the movies.
Real live movie-critics are paid to be cynical. Average movie-goers just want to have a good time.
Thanks for the write-up!
-JazzyChad