by Josh Bernoff
Where do you go when you need the answer to a question?
While writing the first chapter of Harnessing the Groundswell, I wanted to cite a case -- a movie that recently tanked due to bad online buzz during its first weekend. I recalled the example, but not the movie.
Did Google have the answer? I tried combinations like "movie tanked word of mouth" and got nothing. (There is a right combination of words to get this -- can you guess it? Do you want to spend your time guessing stuff like that?) Google news, which is where I started looking, was similarly useless.
Twitter search is useless, too, since the event in question happened months ago.
So I asked Twitter.
In minutes, I heard back from nine people with the answer, Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno. @DwriteN linked me to her paper on the topic. @ericcomes cited an Infegy buzz study, which I'll probably footnote in the book. Others suggested Valkyrie and Gentlemen Broncos as alternatives.
People's brains. What an incredible resource!
P.S. Thanks to my Twitter follower helpers: @melissaMboyes, @benkunz, @ChrisThilik, @Amontero, @amklaasen, @stefanomaggi, @JaneBozarth, and @warrenngP.P.S. the secret key word for google was "decline".
Link to original post