So a good while back now we had the Princess Bride #asyouwish event on Twitter. The basic idea was that you could be part of a group experiencing an event, even if you were not physically near the group. People watching the Eurovision, Rose of Tralee and texting back and forth. Now we’re on Twitter doing it.
We tweeted, we had a liveblog. SoundCheck tuned in from their event. Simon McGarr stuck up some LiveBlog.ie stats too: Total visitors: 409 Number of posts: 885 Number of comments: 281
Mostly super positive reaction to the event and some negative ones complaining that if you want to watch a movie you shouldn’t be tweeting. Or maybe eating. Or moving. And maybe on your own. But you don’t watch Princess Bride for the 5th or 10th time in silence. It’s very participatory. Even on first viewing.
People who have never gone to a concert and sung along to some songs probably would find this foreign and shocking. Maybe people who didn’t partake in a Rocky Horror night with all the props. Shared experiences are here to stay in digital format just like they’ve been around in analog for possibly thousands of years. Christian masses are like this when everyone sings and claps, right?
Then we see this from Fox and Fringe.
On Thursday at 9 p.m., the penultimate episode of Fringe will be accompanied by Twitter commentary from two of the show’s cast and producers.
If you’re a Helge Tennø fan you’ll know his take on marketing and earned media and how companies now need to not broadcast or disrupt and instead contribute and provide. I think vehicles like running shared experience events is one way companies can work with the general public and people from various online communities and have a little bit of fun in the process. Much better than advertising/spamming by asking people to mention your company name on Twitter.
So Princess Bride was the first in a series. People want another Twitter Movie Night soon and we’ll have one alright but also on the way are other participatory events using online communities.
