Flixster

Flixster, Inc.
Founded June 2007 (2007-06)
Headquarters San Francisco, California
Owner Fandango Media
(Time Warner/Warner Bros. (30%)
Comcast/NBCUniversal (70%))[1]
Key people Joe Greenstein (Co-founder)
Saran Chari (Co-founder)
Industry Film, social networking
Employees 75
Website flixster.com
apps.facebook.com/flixster

Flixster is an American social movie site for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes 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 Fandango on February 17, 2016.[4]

History

In February 2016, Fandango acquired Flixster.[5] Fandango began migrating Flixster Video users to its competing service called FandangoNow and will close the Flixster Video service.[6]

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.[7] 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.[8]

Quantcast 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.[9]

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 29, 2011.

Date Active Daily Users
December 4, 2007 >800,000[10]
June 19, 2008 482,542[11]
July 15, 2008 412,401[11]

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[12] place the Movies app as the #9 most-used entertainment application on Facebook, but ranked at only #92 overall.[13]

Marketing practices

Flixster's growth has been described in the trade press as attributable to "its aggressive viral marketing practices",[14] including "the automated selection of your email account's entire address book in order to send a Flixster invitation to all of your contacts."[14] Although Flixster claims this procedure is an industry standard used by other services, 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."[14]

As a consequence of its policy of emailing users' entire address books with advertisements for the site, the website has been criticized on numerous Internet blogs.[15] At one time email from Flixster to Hotmail users was being filtered and deleted as spam.[16]

Around August 2012, the Flixster website stopped allowing public access. Viewers must log in using a free account or Facebook.

Other supported platforms

Recently, Flixster has begun allowing users to watch movies on several different platforms via UltraViolet.

Social media platforms

Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, Orkut

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, all offered social media integration and mobile app is offered free-of-charge, allowing more users to download its application.[17] The first of these applications was released in June 2007 on the Facebook platform. In March 2008, a MySpace app.[18] followed, which had 3,923,506 users[18] as of July 2008. This made it the second most popular application on the MySpace platform.[19] In addition to the Facebook and MySpace apps, Flixster has also developed applications for Bebo[20] and Orkut.[21]

Mobile and desktop platforms

Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows Phone

In August 2008, Flixster released an iOS application,[22] 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.[17] Flixster has also released apps for Android mobile phones, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry phones.[23]

In August 2010, Flixster hit 20 million combined mobile application downloads and has ranked as the top movie app on iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.[17]

Flixster has released a Windows 8 app.

In April, 2014, Flixster's app was updated with Chromecast support allowing users to "cast" movies to a Chromecast-connected device.[24] A streaming only app, Flixster Video, has also been released.[25] This app handles only movie streaming, this function has been removed from the Movies by Flixster app.[25]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Anthony D'Alessandro. "Fandango Acquires Rotten Tomatoes & Flixster - Deadline". Deadline. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  2. ↑ http://www.crunchbase.com/person/joe-greenstein
  3. ↑ Graser, Marc (January 4, 2010). "Flixster buys Rotten Tomatoes". Variety. Retrieved 2010-01-04.
  4. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster Acquired By Fandango". Slashfilm. Retrieved 2016-02-19.
  5. ↑ "Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster Acquired By Fandango". Slashfilm. Retrieved 2016-02-19.
  6. ↑ http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/17/11037054/fandango-rotten-tomatoes-flixster-acquisition-movie-reviews
  7. ↑ "flixster.com Site Overview". Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  8. ↑ "flixster.com Site Overview". Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  9. ↑ "Flixster.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics by Quantcast". Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  10. ↑ "Flixster for Sale (Again)?". AllThingsD. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  11. 1 2 "Flixster on Facebook - Facebook". Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  12. ↑ Entertainment applications page at Facebook.com, accessed September 16, 2010
  13. ↑ Facebook application directory accessed September 16, 2010
  14. 1 2 3 American Venture Magazine Flixster interview
  15. ↑ "Is Flixster a Big Fat Spammer? Are They Accessing Your AOL or Hotmail Address Book? The Answer to at Least One of These is Yes! by The Internet Patrol". The Internet Patrol. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  16. ↑ "Google Answers: Avoiding the Hotmail Spam Filter". Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  17. 1 2 3 "Flixster Hits 20 Million App Downloads. Top Movie App On iPhone, Android, And BlackBerry". TechCrunch. AOL. 20 August 2010. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  18. 1 2 "Featured Content on Myspace". Myspace. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  19. ↑ "Featured Content on Myspace". Myspace. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  20. ↑ Bebo Movies Application Page
  21. ↑ Orkut Movies Application Homepage
  22. ↑ Flixster, Inc. (11 July 2008). "Movies by Flixster, with Rotten Tomatoes". App Store. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  23. ↑ "Flixster Mobile". Retrieved 19 February 2016.
  24. ↑ "Flixster App Updated With Chromecast Support And MicroSD Card Downloads For Samsung Tablets". Android Police. Retrieved 2016-01-20.
  25. 1 2 "What is the difference between the Movies by Flixster app and the Flixster Video app?". support.ultraviolet.flixster.com. Retrieved 2016-01-20.
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