Twitter costs Bruno millions, but saves thousands from 81 minutes of appalling gay rhetoric

July 20 2009, 6:39am

Bruno in Sydney. Photo courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning claiming Twitter cost Bruno millions of dollars at the box office got me thinking again about the power of social media. The article reported an impressive single-day debut on the Saturday of the opening weekend. By Sunday, ticket sales  has dropped 39% – thanks, in part, to the flood of negative reviews which cropped up on Twitter. While I’m sure this scares most marketers, to consumers, this is a godsend. I was one of the few that decided to see Bruno despite the reviews from my Tweeps and well, that’s 81 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. But thanks to Twitter reviews, thousands (potentially) have been saved. We all know this is nothing new. People have always voiced their opinions about products and services; what social media has done is speed up the process and amplify the opinions, be they positive or negative. Looking at this example, the trick with social media is really quite simple. If you want people to say good things about your product online, make sure the product is good to start with. Sugarcoating will only go so far. @AngGraham

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