e; web-a-tar): The enormous online presence surrounding the buzz of Avatar. Originally derived from Avatar, with roots in the World Wide Web.There is no question James Cameron's new movie will eventually outlast Titanic's reign, and for one simple reason: the Internet. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for that last scene, "Don't let go, Jack!" (so emotional). However, a lot has changed since 1997. Google was a year old, Facebook didn't exist, Twitter - uh, nope. I was using AOL on a dial up connection to talk to my 7th grade girlfriend. But enough about the memories.
After reading Mashable's latest post on Avatar it amazes me that Titanic made as much money as it did in the first place with minimal use of the Web and social media. I won't repeat how important social media was for Avatar; instead, I am going to run some hard numbers from Pinyadda's index to prove my point.
From when the trailer debuted on August 20th until its release on Decemeber 18th, 55 posts and articles were published from the top social media blogs and newspapers. From after it's release through today, 63 additional posts and articles were published.
There are of course many more publishers out there than the handful above, so we pulled data from every single site we index to emphasize the point more dramatically:
From August 20th through Avatar's release, 149 articles and blog posts were published. Post launch, a whopping 1,215. That's over 8 times the amount of content.
While I wish I could run Titanic's numbers, unfortunately Pinyadda wasn't around in '97. Regardless, without the proliferation of the WWW and social media, I am willing to bet we would see the inverse of what we see above, with more posts and articles published leading up to the movie's release than after it hit theaters.
Please post your comments, hypotheses, and theories below. I love a good debate.
P.S. I can't even keep up while writing this - Mashable has already published another piece on Avatar, and it complements this post quite nicely.
