'TRON: Legacy' Wins The Christmas Box Office On Twitter

Though TRON: Legacy came in a distant third at the box office over the Christmas weekend, it dominated its rivals on Twitter. According to a report by Mashable, more people tweeted about TRON: Legacy this weekend than both Little Fockers and True Grit combined. Those films were the number one and two films at the box office, pulling in $30.8 and $24.9 million respectively while TRON: Legacy made $19.1 million. On Twitter, though, TRON: Legacy was the clear winner as people used the word "Tron" about 1000 times an hour while "little fockers" and "true grit" each barely averaged 500 tweets an hour

What does this all mean, if anything? We break it down after the jump.

Here is the graph of how all the weekend's tweets stacked up. Thanks to Mashable and if you head over there, you'll get even more graphs and data including the shocking revelation of how much people like Little Fockers.

Looking at that, it has to be said that there are some major loopholes in the logic. For example, it's pretty obvious that people who use Twitter are more likely to see, and talk about, TRON: Legacy as opposed too Little Fockers or True Grit. It's not like the data is between those two films and How Do You Know. TRON: Legacy is a effects driven action film about living in a digital world and it's marketed to people who would use Twitter. In a way, the film is sort of about social media so it's kind of a no-brainer that people who tweet would write about TRON: Legacy before a family comedy or period western.

The second reason this isn't really a surprise is because the data accumulated by Trendrr only accounted for the specific word "Tron," which is one word and four characters. It takes a lot less effort to write a four letter word than movie titles with two words: Little Fockers and True Grit. And while that might sound overly simple, that's the point. Twitter is about being concise and if you can say something in half the characters, on Twitter, you'll do that. If they went in and graphed only the words "tron legacy" the data would surely be different. Plus, just counting "tron" also could be people watching the original movie.

Finally, when people tweet about a movie, they don't just use the title. There are all the actors, directors, misspellings and more to take into account, plus shorter versions of the titles. A tweet that says "The Coen Brothers did it again with Grit" wouldn't count here.

Still, with TRON: Legacy in its second week and True Grit and Little Fockers both brand new, it is slightly surprising how much more people were tweeting about it than the other films. Even with all the considerations mentioned above, there's no denying people are seeing and tweeting about the movie.

Do you hold any validity to these Twitter trends? Or do you think it's meaningless?