Quentin Tarantino’s new war epic took over $64.1 million in the opening weekend making it Tarantino’s most successful movie to date. Hollywood industry experts have concluded that Twitter massively contributed to the success of the film in its opening weekend.
The first people to see the film we quick to Tweet feedback about the movie which created a Twitter buzz about the film. Positive feedback flooded Twitter as the weekend progressed. Feedback about the Second World War epic quickly grew in momentum which maintained a massive level of interest and excitement about the film.

“the movie actually held its ground and even picked up steam as the weekend went on, as even Saturday twitterers enthusiastically tweeted and re-tweeted their approval… Finally, a Twitter effect that benefits a movie instead of hurts it.” Taken from the Hollywood Reporter.

This is another example of the power of real time search and social networking, it’s clear that based on the success of this film more emphasis will be placed, by movie promoters, on marketing Twitter audiences in the future.

Article by Creative SEO

Google Maps adds a collection of Celebrity Favorite places from around the world, is this the first stage of testing a new system which allows Google users to share their favourite places?

Google Maps has revolutionised the internet and online mapping. Local companies are able to add their businesses directly to Google Maps, showing the location of their company and advertising there business under local search terms and all this for free.
Google are constantly trying to improve the service by adding more and more places and destinations to Google Maps. Google Local Business centre has been extremely successful but still only a small proportion of businesses have taken the time to add their company. Google needs to look at new alternative methods of populating attractions, businesses and places of interest in order to continue to add value to the service.

Google have added a New feature to Google Maps called Favourite Places which currently shows the favourite destinations of celebrities and a comment about why they really like each location. The data for this initial experiment has been accumulated from a variety of different sources including: United Airlines, NYC & Company, Time Out and Le Figaro.



This is a fun service but with around 200 celebrities revealing their Favorite places from around the world, how will this truly benefit the end user?

Google have let slip to the potential of this service and it seems they will be using the service to discover and recruit more local businesses to appear in Google Maps.

“With this project we also hope to send a friendly message to local businesses — people are looking online for local information, and you should be here.” Taken from the Official Google Blog.

As the service stands this would not be possible, but by allowing Google users to add their own personal favourite places, Google could potentially massively improve their ability to discover and add new Local businesses, places of interest and attractions. Allowing the Google community to help with the discovery would be an act of genius and would add yet another unique feature to the service, maintaining Google’s industry leading position.

More and more people are turning to the internet in order to find local businesses, restaurants, bars, clubs, stores etc through the use of computers and mobile devices.

“It’s estimated that 80% of U.S. Internet users use web search to find restaurants, stores and other local businesses, and yet only about half of local businesses currently have a website. By working with local experts to highlight the power of the web, we’re encouraging local business owners to build out their online presence.” Google.

Consumer demand is high and it’s clear to see that Google are taking this demand seriously. Adding more local businesses to Google Maps would add value to the service allowing users to find the local services they were looking for. If Google were to open up favourites to the Google Community, the potential functionality would be extremely exciting. Local businesses could be assigned a level of popularity based to direct searches for specific locations and business types. Users could accurately rate a business based on personal experience. The list of functionality goes on, we will have to wait and see exactly what Google has planned, but as always this is an exciting time.

Article by Creative SEO UK