So I quickly popped onto the Twitter account during my lunch break to test posting using Ping.FM via Skype
(I know that sounds complicated but there is method in my madness) when I came across the fact that the term “Giant Octopus” (or #Giant Octopus) was one of Twitters top ten trending topics.
First I thought was that somebody had found or caught a Giant Octopus and I was about to go experience a National Geographic moment (…I love doco’s…and spent part of last night watching one about a colossal squid). What I found however was the topic that was trending was a film called “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus” which was premiering on SyFy cable networkin the US their time tonight. Hmmmm….so if there is that much chatter about this movie it must be a master piece one would think???
Well it appears not.
It’s popularity is because it’s beyond bad! It appears the plot is ridiculously awful, the special effects are cheaper than a Whopper Jnr Meal, and the acting by Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas are up there as favourites for both Best Male and Best Female Golden Turkeys .
Stunned by all this I went and checked it out on my beloved Rotten Tomatoes to double check it out and discovered that it really is THAT BAD !!! It got 11% on the TOMATOMETER with reviews like “How this ever got released is a mystery. Unwatchable, almost unreviewable, this stupid monster movie makes the Bela Lugosi swan song Plan 9 from Outer Space look like a masterpiece” (by Peter Whittle of the Sunday Times in the UK).
But what does this all mean?
Well, what we have here is a sensational demonstration of how Twitter is an instant gauge of popular culture and/or popularity in real time. And the fact that the program has not even aired yet – but so many people are talking about it (there was another 218 tweets in the 10 minutes it took to write this entry) – you can start to appreciate how Twitter is becoming a powerful tool to not only understand what your customers are saying, but to research what your market believes, even before the event.
One tweet suggested that because of all the reasons why the movie is so unbelievably bad that this is the very reason why “Seriously how awesome does that sound?”. Based on this feedback from users if I was the SyFy network I would be looking for as many bad movies as I could find. This is great market research and demonstrates that if someone could work out a way to associate demographics with Twitter posts they would have an tool offering popular consensus in real-time. (BTW – I did a search for this type of offering and I can’t find it, so it’s out there for the taking.)
It also raises another interesting point. In a recent article on the BBC website they talk about “Twitter tweets are 40% ‘babble’” and while the Micro-blogging site Twitter has some high profile users, a short-term study of Twitter has found that 40% of the messages sent via it are “pointless babble.”
I would argue that “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus” has just demonstrated that there is no such thing as “pointless babble” – it is all relevant and just depends on how or what data you want or need to consume.
So thank you “Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus” for being so incrediably bad. If you were not I would not have another reason for why Twitter is so incredibly good!
P.S. However I don’t think I will be getting it out on DVD…
