How the Social World Is Influencing Movie Ratings

The Layered Community Cake of Movie Evaluations

One of the great beauties of this “social rating” system is that it comes in various layers. Rotten Tomatoes provides a great example in this instance. Those who want to find their Ebert and Roeper style rating can do so, with a huge number of the reviews coming from “official” sources such as high-profile web publications, magazine reviews, or even just the opinions of incredibly well-established voices in the film community.

The Evolution of “Associative Ratings”

The community rating system doesn’t end there. There’s still one major issue to address: not all people like the same type of movies. While some people enjoy love stories others choose to watch a good horror movie. Some groups love the Not Another Teen Movie form of comedy, others are repulsed by it, instead preferring “high-brow” humor; and the list goes on.

Finding out what people like and sending them in the direction of their interests is easy with associative ratings. With access to a broad database of user feedback, these sites can start seeing “trends.” If you like Role Models and Anchorman, you’re likely to enjoy Superbad – because most people who liked the first two films also liked the third. This concept has been introduced in a number of settings, with prominent players in associative rating including Netflix, GetGlue, and Yap.tv.

Extending Reach and Integration

The goal of the most recent technologies has been to take all these innovations and bundle them together, allowing users to take advantage of community feedback, associative ratings, and the buzz the movie has been getting on social networks. The recent introduction of Fflick is the ideal example. In the same way that Rotten Tomatoes gathers reviewers from prominent sources, Fflick aggregates reviews from the masses by scouring Twitter posts. This allows the service to provide a large base of community data without the community having to do anything beyond their normal Tweets.

Fflick, originally designed by several ex-Digg employees for implementation on Facebook, was quickly scooped up by Google. Google is expected to integrate Fflick with YouTube, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll stop there; the possible applications of Fflick are numerous, and services like these become more powerful the more they’re integrated.

The service will be integrated with other platforms. The reach of “review collecting” has extended significantly, and will continue to grow; associative rating is becoming more intelligent, and both movie producers and marketing groups are starting to pay more attention to sites like GetGlue and Yap.tv; and major companies are starting to back these community rating ventures. Not only is the social world of the web influencing how we rank movies – it’s conquering the entire territory.

Become a fan of BlueGlass on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe to our RSS feed.