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Check This Out: TwitCritics Real-Time Movie Ratings from Twitter

by Alex Billington
October 22, 2009
Source: SlashFilm

While Rotten Tomatoes still remains the king of the movie rating world, I've started to really care less about them, mainly because of their ridiculous rules that allow for such hacks as Armond White to be included in the Tomatometer. Thanks to SlashFilm, I finally discovered a potential alternative called TwitCritics (twitcritics.com) that capitalizes on the Twitter craze, compiling reviews of movies and giving an average rating, like Rotten Tomatoes. There are obviously issues (such as how does it know what you said was good or bad), but I think this may be the first time that Twitter feedback is being harnessed in a usable way.

Peter from SlashFilm states: "I really believe that Twitter is a powerful tool, which has yet to be completely harnessed. Websites like this will take this real-time data and provide analysis, which will result in some awesome real-time data we’ve never seen before." I completely agree with him on that and from the looks of it, TwitCritics has the potential to stand out. Instead of guessing that the general response from the 1610 people that I personally follow is more negative or positive, I can come to TwitCritics and see (for example) that out of the 3116 tweets tracked mentioning Where the Wild Things Are, only 79% of them are positive.

The site does have a simple system for making corrections. Beneath the red/green thumbs up/down image, there's a "mistake" link which allows you to correct the tweet if it's wrong, just spam, or not even a critique at all. I think this correction then goes through an administrative approval system moderated by a real person, so the system can't be tipped. But it looks like it works great so far and I actually believe it's giving the most accurate representation of what the Twitter world thinks of certain movies. I'll be curious to see how this site grows and watch its development. Make sure you check it out: twitcritics.com. Thoughts?

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Related categories: Cool Stuff, Opinions

notes

90% for Law Abiding Citizen? Pass. Also, does this compile everyone's tweets about the movies or just critics? Because if it's everyone, there's a very noticeable paradox. If most moviegoers don't like a movie they haven previously seen, they usually won't mention it at all. Hence why you look at the image's numbers and practically every film has a positive rating.
Greedo

This is worse than the IMDB Top 250.
Morpheous

where's paranormal activity?!?!?!?!?!?! SUCKERS!!
cj

Why is Armond White a hack? I like the idea that a critic takes a strong stance about art and doesnt give in to the masses. Alex, you seem to be a bit of critic yourself with your website; yet you jump on the band wagon and criticize Armond?
beetle

Atleast Armond White critisizes films, and not love up every hollywood film, especially if its a stupid comic-action movie. I mean come on...Transformers- both of them have the silliest storylines, but people love them because of the "Action" It is funny how movies are being judged on their "action" these days. Transformers, Xmen, Spiderman. All stupid, just kids movies, with a bit of swearing to make them more adult. I mean spiderman.. come on, so much moral crap there, I hate it when films tell you how you should think, leave that to the 90's daytime sitcoms. For voting IMDB rules, because it never underates films.but it may overate films like transformers 1 got a 7.4...pathetic. rotten tomatoes ratings seem to be higher than imdb, and now this twitcrap seems to rate them even HIGHER than rotten tomatoes. pathetic, where the wild things are 79%???? hahahaha what is it the new deer hunter???
http://twitcritics.com TwitCritics

Thanks for the review And thanks to the commentors for the questions/comments. To answer some of these questions. First, the corrections are indeed moderated to avoid bots or people submitting bad corrections. We felt that the only other alternative would be to force everybody who wanted to submit a correction to have a validated account. We didn't want to make people have an account to use our site. The corrections also go back into the system to help improve our Sentiment Analysis algorithms. The many corrections we have received so far have already been used to help improve the system. @Morpheous We actually do have Paranormal Activity in the system, but we don't publish it to the main page until we reach a certain number of tweets to have an overall rating. We hope that it will show up by the end of today. @notes The tweets are not from professional critics. Well, some may be, but we do not specifically target specific people's tweets. We simply collect tweets about the new movies from anyone and everyone. If you have any questions/comments you can reply here (we checked the 'notify me') or our contact info can be found on the site. Hope you stay tuned to see the site improve and grow!
Jake

so...this is like RT Community only much less reliable.
SlashBeast

Armond White is a complete hack. Going against the grain for the sake of creating controversy is not helpful nor does it advance film criticism. If you seriously base your taste on Armond White's reviews, I feel very, very sorry for you. #5 - beetle Your post is so full of fail I don't even know where to begin. Armond actually liked Transformers 2, and hated Transformers (Go against the grain for the sake of it) It's funny that you'd say that most critics blindly praise blockbusters when most would agree that critics haven't been very kind to recent blockbusters. All stories have some kinds of themes or morals. Superheroes are based in morals, that's why they've lasted for so many decades and have been entrenched in popular culture. A story with nothing to say is a bad story. Seriously, go learn how to troll.
Governor

All this list proves is that the internet will be humanity's doom.
beetle

#8 Slash Beast I know little of Armond White, My comment was not targeted to complimemt Armond, it was more against those who are hardly critical and love films with no story whatsoever like transformers (either of them) etc but because they like the action so much hiding the plot. people end up loving them. Its ok to like to them, but then they just like seeing action on a big screen like a 8 yr old kid would. When I mean "moral crap" I am not talking about how themes, and am not talking about morality in generai, i am talking how these (most not all) superhero films try to brainwash people how to think. (e.g. end of spiderman3). You should be allowed to make your own decision, and nothing is black and white. The great movies such as Blade Runner,2001, A Clockwork Orange, do not tell people how to think! They take important questions such as 'what it is to be human?'-blade runner, and EXPLORE the question through the movie, they do not give you an answer, as every mature man can think for himself. For kids different story, but these superhero films have 15 or R ratings to them. Even the great classic books always explored never answered, Dostoyevsky etc The dark knight changed the game as every character was grey, there was no moral at the end of the story, i mean listen to that speech spiderman makes after his mate dies at the end of spiderman 3, its like something at the end of different strokes. #9 hahahaha
Movieraider321

I despise Rotten Tomatoes, it's full of a bunch of film school students who weren't good enough to make films so now they judge them as if they are gods. I don't care how long they have been doing it, the film should be catagorized into certain things. "Will Comic book fans like this movie?" "Will artsy film fans like this movie" Because everyone's opinion varies. I dont like the way people do the rating system for films. It's up to the individual, thats why I don't listen to reviewers and I go see what looks good to me.
SlashBeast

#10 - beetle If you were "brainwashed" by Spider-Man's morals of "With great power comes great responsibility", I'd consider getting professional help.
beetle

#12- slashbeast i said "try" to brainwash, and wasnt specific to one line. By the way that famous line is not original at all, i think even uncle bens used it before.
SlashBeast

#13 - beetle Please stop. Where do you think that line came from? Who told Peter that? Who the hell gets "brainwashed" by watching Spider-Man? We're going to have an army of morally upstanding kids taking over the word? Just stop.
KMils

In a rating system where new movies get hundreds of critical reviews, does one "hack" voice really matter? No, it does not. A high sample size means individuals have less ability to influence the final result. This system has one enormous flaw - it pulls EVERYTHING from Twitter. Take a look at the page for "A Beautiful Life" (http://twitcritics.com/movie?id=1399). Any tweet mentioning the words "beautiful" and "life" is counted as a review. Same thing with "Fame", "Extract", "Gamer", "Informant", etc... A solid idea, but it's going to need some work before it truly reflects what people think. Also, RT has a "RT Community" ratings system. I'm willing to bet that scores there are pretty similar to scores on TwitCritics. And popular opinion early always drops (IMDB Top 250).
beetle

#14 - slashbeast I dont like to repeat myself but "TRY" as in ATTEMPT. If you didnt already know, it is a common belief by many that the media try to persuade people what to think, buy etc. Please stop with the most cliche line in film history. Its been used by so many people, its not exactly an original line.
SlashBeast

#16 - beetle Once again, who cares? The character of Spider-Man is built on such a moral. Of course people try and persuade you, but you're not a sheep that just follows everything. You have a choice to listen or not, nobody can "force" you into doing anything. This is getting ridiculous, I'm stopping it here.
beetle

#17 - slashbeast I agree with the not forcing issue, and that’s what differentiates a good film to a bad film. Poor films such as the Spiderman franchise, say this is how you should think, and I’m not saying people necessarily will do it. Good films explore an important question and let the viewer make his own judgement and ask you to just basically think. The Spiderman films were so predictable, nothing original, nothing new. It’s overrated because people like the action just because of the cgi. CGI has made the worst of films look good as they are extremely simple stories (you don’t have to be a genius to write these scripts) but with expensive action. Why did people like Spiderman 2 so much when it came out? Oh wait... more villains and more action. Why did people like Transformers so much?... 80% action. The story was hideously stupid and simple. I swear it was written in crayon, and in my eyes story is everything, if there is no story what is the point? The dialogue is the poorest I have seen in years, the cheesiest lines. I find it incredible hilarious that the criticism received for Transformers 2 was apparent in the first one, and yet they still love the first one...why? ... because they were too enthralled by the action scenes which HID the poor story.
SlashBeast

#18 - beetle I agree completely with what you wrote (weird!).
SlashBeast

beetle, shut your disgusting mouth. What kind of tard gets brainwashed by Spider-Man? God forbid that something teaches a useful moral that actually helps society. That's the problem with modern movies, we run away from morality like we're going to catch death from it. You and your kind need to shut your diharrea infested mouths and mutilate your genitals.