A finger on the pulse of public opinion
A new site from The Nielsen Company could mark the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the public and movie, TV and music producers. The social network site gives users the chance to comment on, review and rate entertainment. The site then collates the reviews and general media buzz to produce star ratings for the shows, films and songs.
There’s nothing new here, until you look a little deeper. The beauty of Hey! Nielsen is its promise to unite the public with decision-makers in the companies that produce entertainment.
The Hey! Nielsen website claims:
“…the exclusive access and power of Nielsen means that your opinions not only reach millions of people via the web, but may also reach the media moguls who decide what goes on the air and on the web. The more heat your postings generate, the greater the chance your opinions will land on the most influential inboxes in the biz…”
The site is supported by Nielsen’s sister sites Billboard.com, HollywoodReporter.com, and BlogPulse.com, some of the most influential sites in the industry. So there’s a good chance that users’ opinions will be read by powerful people.
Could this collatable SMO approach be beneficial for other industries? Sure, few things create as much public interest as entertainment. But imagine having such a simple, one-stop barometer for consumer goods. Apple might have benefitted from this kind of feedback before locking down the iPhone (which led to numerous bad reviews, like this one from Gizmodo). Or in other industries, from paint coatings to switch manufacturing, a tool for collating public opinion could give producers insight into what people want, like, dislike and need – like easy to manage focus groups – enabling them to create the right products to suit their customers.
Sound neat, huh?
