Paranormal Activity uses Eventful to find an audience.

Eventful is a music site that I wrote about a few months ago. Essentially it's group buying for fans - fans can demand that an artist comes to their town; if enough fans sign up then the artist comes. The site has social tools like widgets that people can embed into their social network pages, to try to motivate friends to join their cause.

Universal Pictures have been the first to tap into this to promote a movie. As this article details they set up an account for Paranormal Activity, then said that they'd release the film in the top 10 cities in the Us demanding it. Demand rose, so they then said that they'd release it nationwide if they god 1 million demands. Which they did - see picture.


The film has now made over $100m in the US in revenues.

I love this because it shows people using things for purposes other than what they were intended for. Yet why not use a live music site to promote a film? Often the audiences will be very similar. (Small caveat - I'm taking all of this at face value - it is actually possible that this is all part of the hype for the film.)

Another brilliant example of this is that Everton now use the game Football Manager as part of their scouting network - Football Manager keeps up to date information on thousands of footballers to make the game realistic; Everton pay them a fee to use this to research up and coming talent.