Wednesday 16 June 2010

Twitter sells out to Toy Story 3

Eleven years ago, my 8-year-old self shuffled to the movie theatre with my 6-year-old brother to see the new Disney/Pixar movie everyone was talking about.

We fell in love with the cowardly T-Rex, a potato going through a mid-life crisis, a worn out cowboy that sounds very much like Forrest Gump and a cocky astronaut.

Three years later, they're back for the 3rd toy story, with more toys, more laughs, more effects (3d!) and more... shameless promoting?

As if this movie wasn't already talked about enough - there's a FB page "Move out of the way children I've been waiting 11 years to see Toy Story 3." But Disney/Pixar went ahead and for the first time to my knowledge, BOUGHT a trending topic on Twitter.

Quick Twitter lesson for the confused: Trending Topics are a list of the currently most mentioned items on Twitter - they can range from the names of politicians to "world cup" to "oil spill" to "Justin Beiber" to "The Sandlot" or whatever movie happens to be on ABC Family at the moment.

Simply, Trending Topics are dominated by the people of Twitter. If Obama is giving a health care speech, "Health care" will probably be one of the trending topics. A popular movie, even, on its opening night, might be a Trending Topic.

So I think it's the start of something horrible to see a "promoted" TT. Here is Twitter saying, "Look! This is important and people are talking about it!" When really, Disney/Pixar just threw a bunch of money at this site, to put "Toy Story 3" on the list... a list it probably would have been on anyway.

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