Flixster
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| Founded | June 2007 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA |
| Key people | Joe Greenstein (Co-founder & CEO); Saran Chari (Co-founder & CTO); Steve Polsky (President); James Smith (CRO); |
| Owner | Time Warner |
| Employees | 32[1] |
| Slogan | Watch movies. Tell friends. |
| Website | flixster.com apps.facebook.com/flixster |
| Type of site | Social Networking |
Flixster is a social movie site allowing users to share movie ratings, discover new movies, learn about movies, and meet others with similar taste in movies. The site allows users to view movie trailers as well as learn about the new and upcoming movies in the box office. The site is based in San Francisco, California and was founded by Joe Greenstein and Saran Chari in 2007.[2] Flixster has been the parent of website Rotten Tomatoes since January 2010.[3] Flixster including Rotten Tomatoes was acquired by Warner Bros. on May 4, 2011.[4]
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[edit] Site information
Between November 2006 and January 2007, the number of daily page views by Alexa Toolbar users rose from fewer than 20 million per day to around 50 million per day.[5] Alexa no longer (June 2008) provides numbers of daily page views, but the number of page views as a percentage decreased by almost two thirds from mid-December 2007 to mid-June 2008.[6]
Quantcast.com reports that the number of global daily page views for Flixster.com peaked at 8,331,961 on January 23, 2008 and dropped to 1,325,685 by July 5, 2008.[7]
The quality of these daily page views seems to be dropping as well. In May 2008 the average number of page views per visit reported by Compete.com was 5.1,[8] down from over 16 page views per visit in May 2007. Average user stay per visit was down to 3 minutes 19 seconds in May 2008[9] compared to over 8 minutes a year before.
Flixster's Facebook application, called "Movies", has consistently been one of the most popular apps on the site. Daily user totals peaked in December 2007.
Flixster Collections, a desktop application featuring a content discovery and management system, began open beta testing on July 29th, 2011.
| Date | Active Daily Users |
|---|---|
| December 4, 2007 | >800,000[10] |
| June 19, 2008 | 482,542[11] |
| July 15, 2008 | 412,401[12] |
This was a common trend among Facebook applications, attributed to what has been described as "app. fatigue". Facebook no longer displays daily active use, but instead monthly active use. As of September 2010, its popularity has waned significantly, and its 2.98 million monthly active users[13] place the Movies app. as the #9 most-used entertainment application on Facebook, but ranked at only #92 overall.[14]
[edit] Common criticism
Flixster's growth has been described in the trade press as being due to "its aggressive viral marketing practices",[15] including "the automated selection of your email account's entire address book in order to send a Flixster invitation to all of your contacts."[15] Although Flixster claims this procedure is an industry standard used by other services,[16][17][18][19] Flixster differs in that their system automatically selects all contacts in the user's address book and requires the user to manually un-select each address individually to prevent email from being sent in the user's name. Co-Founder Joe Greenstein has described the difference between Flixster and other sites as: "We make it easy to invite your friends. Other sites don't provide good ways for people to spread the word."[15]
As a consequence of its rise in popularity due to its policy of emailing users' entire address books with advertisements for the site, the website has been discussed on numerous Internet blogs.[20] At one time email from Flixster to Hotmail users was being filtered and deleted as spam.[21]
[edit] Applications on other platforms
Flixster has developed applications for several social networking sites. These apps have many of the same features as the main Flixster site, such as ratings, reviews, and user-generated quizzes. Furthermore, each and every social networking site app. or mobile app. is completely free, allowing more users to download its application.[22] The first of these applications was released in June 2007 on the Facebook platform. In March 2008, a MySpace app.[23] followed, which had 3,923,506 users[23] as of July 2008. This made it the second most popular application on the MySpace platform.[24] In addition to the Facebook and MySpace apps, Flixster has also developed applications for Bebo[25] and Orkut.[26]
In August 2008, Flixster released an iPhone application,[27] which allows users to access movie showtimes, reviews, and trailers. Furthermore, this iPhone and iPod app. for Flixster is the number one movie application yet.[28] An iGoogle gadget[29] with similar functionality was released in October 2008. Flixster has also released apps for Android mobile phones, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry phones.[30]
In August 2010, Flixster hit 20 million combined mobile application downloads and has ranked as the top movie app on iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.[31]
[edit] References
- ^ The Flixster Team
- ^ http://www.crunchbase.com/person/joe-greenstein
- ^ Graser, Marc (January 4, 2010). "Flixster buys Rotten Tomatoes". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118013270.html. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
- ^ "Warner bros. - press release". Cision Wire. http://www.cisionwire.com/warner-bros--home-entertainment-group/warner-bros--press-release---warner-bros--home-entertainment-group-to-acquire-flixster116411. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
- ^ Page view provided by Alexa
- ^ Alexa site traffic details for Flixster.com, June 18, 2008
- ^ Quantcast site traffic details for Flixster.com, July 15, 2008
- ^ Snapshot of flixster.com at Compete.com
- ^ Snapshot of flixster.com at Complete.com
- ^ Flixster for Sale (Again)? by Kara Swisher
- ^ Flixster application page at Facebook.com accessed June 19, 2008
- ^ Flixster application page at Facebook.com accessed July 15, 2008
- ^ Entertainment applications page at Facebook.com, accessed September 16, 2010
- ^ Facebook application directory accessed September 16, 2010
- ^ a b c American Venture Magazine Flixster interview
- ^ Flickr Address Import Page
- ^ Bebo Address Import Page
- ^ MySpace Address Import Page
- ^ Facebook Address Import Page
- ^ http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/is-flixster-a-big-fat-spammer-are-they-hacking-your-aol-or-hotmail-address-book/
- ^ Google Answers question about lifting blacklisting of Flixster by Hotmail
- ^ Flixster Hits 20 Million App Downloads. Top Movie App On iPhone, Android, And BlackBerry
- ^ a b MySpace Movies Application Homepage
- ^ MySpace Most Popular Applications Page
- ^ Bebo Movies Application Page
- ^ Orkut Movies Application Homepage
- ^ Movies app on iTune App Store
- ^ Flixster Hits 20 Million App Downloads. Top Movie App On iPhone, Android, And BlackBerry
- ^ iGoogle Movies app homepage.
- ^ Flixster mobile apps
- ^ Flixster Hits 20 Million App Downloads. Top Movie App On iPhone, Android, And BlackBerry
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