Author:
Matthew Fong
Jan
4
With my holiday tradition (I launched advancescreenings.com redesign on Thanksgiving and what2see.com on Christmas), I was planning to launch this site on New Years Day but everyone was out getting drunk so nobody would’ve seen it anyway. My newest site is called BigScreenTweets. A few months ago I made TwIMDb and this is the companion site.
To refresh your memory, TwIMDb is a browser extension which shows you twitter links on IMDb. I’ve updated the extensions to also show an IMDb link on user’s #newtwitter pages. I didn’t bother coding for the old layout since it’s supposed to be history in a couple of days or so. You can get the Google Chrome or Mozilla FireFox here.
BigScreenTweets.com is the companion site which is basically a mashup of IMDb and Twitter. You can search through upcoming movies and see which cast and crew members on twitter. There’s a stream at the bottom of the latest tweets and you can see which movies have the most twitter users (in my words, the most social movies). If this site gets traffic and has wings, I’ll build more on to it to see relevant movie tweets like twitpics from set or calls for extras, screenings, and whatnot.
BigScreenTweets.com Screenshot
By following actors, directors, writers, producers, and crew members, you can get a new look into films while they’re being made, thought of, or promoted. True fans can follow along on set while the movie is being made without having to travel to Hollywood, Toronto, or wherever else their making movies these days. Movies are already starting to get their own twitter accounts like Scream 4 (@Scream4) and Faster Five (@FastFurious) but most have horrible follow counts like Season of the Witch (@SOTWthemovie) which is the new Nicolas Cage movie that comes out this weekend with only 125 followers at the time of this post. This site will help those PR accounts out and get more interaction with fans hopefully tying up a loose knot in the movie/fan connection.
Hope you guys enjoy and please feel free to give me any feedback on any of my sites…more to come.
What’s holiday next? Martin Luther King Day? Maybe I’ll actually code http://whatholidayistoday.com/ …
Filed under:
Site Updates
Author:
Matthew Fong
Dec
25
what2see.com was actually the first domain name I ever bought back in 2003 (I was in high school). Even since then, I have been obsessed with movies. I wanted to create a simple see it or skip it type review site. I must have designed and coded it a million times but I was a perfectionist.
what2see.com turned into a sandbox for me with random ideas. It actually became one of the most visited sites a couple times when I posted that infamous three way lesbian kiss between Madonna, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera from the MTV Video Muisc Awards and then the leaked images from Valve Software’s Half Life 2 video game. I got some emails from angry lawyers for that one =/. But basically,
what2see.com never became anything. I had the idea for a website that would list advance screenings and while developing that stumbled on the domain name
advancescreenings.com (where the site lives now).
Now with advance screenings up and running, I go to A LOT of movies…and I mean a lot. A couple of my friends are also hooked so I wanted to create a review site for us all to compare what we thought (even before the movies were released in theaters). You’d be surprised how hard it is to talk about a movie when nobody else has seen it! I’ve always loved the way EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly), a video game magazine, did their reviews back in the day. They had their reviewers each say what they thought about the movie so you could compare different opinions. They also had Sushi-X! I took that inspiration of compare and contrast with alter egos and combined it with set structured questions so you can get the gist on any movie.
The result is the new movie review site:
what2see.com. Throughout 2011, we’ll be reviewing almost every movie that comes out and giving unbiased straight-forward opinions of them. It’s interesting…most movie critics out there are the the same and leech off each other’s input and studios’ hype to formulate their reviews. In my opinion, most people just want to know if they would enjoy a movie or not and get the opinion of someone they can relate to. The movie could be terrible but be really fun to watch…people want to know that. With the review crew of
what2see.com, you have 2 guys and 2 girls from all corners of the United States. This way, you get a wide variety of opinions.
I built the site in a couple days so there isn’t too much fancy stuff going on. It’s a simple grid layout to easily compare and contrast ideas. I’m going to add a voting mechanism so the reviews will be ordered in the way that the public wants them. There are a set of structured questions as well as a few custom questions for each movie. I hope the tone is light and fun so the reviews will be as entertaining (or more) than the actual movie. In my holiday release obsession, I’m launching this for Christmas (I launched the
advancescreenings.com redesign on Turkey Day). This is probably a stupid move since no movies come out between now and a week into the New Year but hey, gives me some time to work out the kinks, right?
Happy Holidays.
Filed under:
Site Updates
Author:
Matthew Fong
May
9
There’s no excuse for my lack of posting except for all the other things I’ve been busy doing. Maybe now that I’ve added the android app, Ill post more…especially with the traveling I’ve done and will be doing.
The truth is, with twitter, I blast 140 character updates and writing a blog post seems redundant. Some say that just means you have nothing worth saying. That’s somewhat true if you can’t elaborate but I just don’t have the time.
All of my movie reviews are posted on advancescreenings, my music listenings are supposed to be onLoop (but I’ve neglected that too), and my day to day thoughts are on twitter. What does that leave? These posts are supposed to be my indepth reactions and future plans…it’s just tought when you go from one thing to the next.
I was doing ok this year until South By Southwest. Now, almost mid year, I’m actually getting a little break but it’s about to start all over again with the World Cup so we’ll see how that goes…
Filed under:
Site Updates