The Help Outside Table - H 2011
DreamworksIt may have opened six weeks ago, but The Help is still the No. 1 movie in theaters.
Based on the online buzz it is generating, at least.
According to startup company SocialGuide, 14 percent of all publicly available Facebook and Twitter comments about movies in release were about The Help in the past several weeks.
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SocialGuide launched in April with its Social 100 list that ranks TV shows on a scale based on social-network commentary, and it is set to announce Friday that it has unleashed a similar product for movies.
As of Thursday night, 65,564 people had tweeted or posted to Facebook 87,021 messages about The Help. The most re-tweeted messages about the film are also posted at Socialguide.com, including one from Yae_Gee17 that DreamWorks ought to find particularly intriguing: “Watchin The Help (On Bootleg.)”
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SocialGuide doesn’t do “sentiment analysis” to figure out whether the tweets or Facebook posts from those who have seen a film liked or disliked it, but it does keep track of the number of people who express a desire to see the film. In the case of The Help, 5,233 people indicated that they intend to see it.
Rounding out the list of the Top 5 releases generating the most social-network buzz, according to SocialGuide, are: Contagion, Friends With Benefits, Thor and Warrior.
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As for upcoming movies, Straw Dogs is No. 1 at 26 percent, followed by Drive, Abduction, Moneyball and Real Steel.
SocialGuide CEO Sean Casey says he’s working on a way to monetize the data collected, with products being readied now that he’ll sell to networks, ad agencies and film studios.
“We’re kind of like a Nielsen for social,” he says.
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So far, though, the young company’s website only attracts 10,000 unique visitors a month.
“We’re small, but we just launched our movie site and we’ve seen time spent jump from five minutes to eight minutes per user,” he said.
