Sony Turns to Twitter to Advertise 'The Social Network'

Sony Turns to Twitter to Advertise 'The Social Network'

July 16, 2010 - 3:28 pm

Dorothy PomerantzBio | Email
Dorothy Pomerantz is a staff writer in the Los Angeles bureau of Forbes 

The hottest movie trailer (see below) making the rounds these days is for Sony’s upcoming film The Social Network which hits theaters in October. The movie is based on the book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, which pretty much says it all. The film’s tagline is “You Don’t get to 500 Million Friends without making a few enemies.”
Unsurprisingly, Sony can’t market the film on Facebook. A Sony spokesman told All Thing Digital that Facebook doesn’t allow ads that reference the company unless Facebook is cooperating. Facebook is not cooperating on the movie which was written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher. At a recent  All Things Digital conference Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (who is the main character in the film) said he wished the film hadn’t been made in his lifetime.
So instead Sony has turned to Twitter to advertise the movie. The Social Network is now a promoted trending topic on the website. Trending topics show what are the most talked about things on Twitter at any given time. If a trend is marked “promoted” that means it’s being paid for. Companies like Starbucks and Best Buy have been using the new platform which displays the promoted tweets at the top of search page results.
Twitter has a reported 106 million users to Facebook’s 450 million users but that might not hurt Sony. NOT being on Facebook has provided the film with lots of early attention and buzz as movie enthusiasts and fans and foes of Facebook alike eagerly dissect every moment of each new teaser and trailer.