Brian Zafron: I Eat Web 2.0 for Breakfast

Not all marketing pays dividends. Here’s an example that’s bound to bring a delicious smile to your face:

Despite a jam-packed three weeks of promotion for Paris Hilton’s new film The Hottie and The Nottie, the opening weekend numbers were complete cow dung. A romantic comedy starring Hilton, Joel David Moore, and Christine Lakin, it opened Friday to $9,000 on 111 screens, or $81 per screen, according to Box Office Mojo.

For those keeping track on the Paris Hilton temperature scale, that’s NOT hot. In fact, it’s colder than a Eskimo’s refrigerator. Basically, 2-3 people were watching her film, on average, each screening. The weekend gross tumbled in at $27,000. Meanwhile, according to the New York Post, she got “paid $100K to have her 25th birthday at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas.” So don’t worry about the princess going broke.

The only comparable box office disaster is Jessica Simpson’s 2007 “star vehicle” Blonde Ambition, which averaged $48 per screen on a Friday opening for a total box office of $384. The film grossed $6,422 domestically before – thank God!/ at long last!/please kill me! – it came to DVD.

Paris had premiered the film in Hollywood and Dallas, appeared in Philadelphia, at Harvard University, and the Sundance Film Festival, and even shmoozed on talk shows such as the Late Show with David Letterman. And even with all that marketing effort, she still couldn’t get people to watch her movie. What did I tell ya? Marketing ain’t easy.

So what does all this mean for the old marketing adage: does sex still sell? Probably. But sometimes content gets in the way.

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Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

Below is some breaking news from an associate at the VC firm that’s funding my spanking new online venture. We had dinner last night in Beverly Hills and he mentioned his firm’s “interest” (activity?) in helping someone finance the acquisition of the popular Facebook application, Scrabulous, with the intention of settling with Hasbro and EA later down the line. Today, I noticed I could no longer access my active Scrabulous games. Gulp! A quick call to my friend confirmed that the shit indeed hit the fan.

At approximately 2:09PM PST this afternoon, Scrabulous, boasting over 2.3 million active users, appears to be down. This possible removal comes after a month long legal battle with Hasbro, the makers of Scrabble, who sued under claims of trademark infringement.

Scrabulous was originally created by two Indian brothers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, as a standalone website. Growth was exponentially increased when Scrabulous joined the orgy of new Facebook applications, climbing to the 9th most popular slot with over 600,000 daily users.

Legal experts have pointed out that Hasbro’s case against Scrabulous is pretty air tight, and it was only a matter of time before the application was removed. Nevertheless, Facebook appears to be missing a golden opportunity by not leveraging the app’s traffic, particularly since no online version of Scrabble currently exists.

So, when the dust settles, what’s left? 2.3 million pissed off Facebook users, a boat-load of unfinished Scrabulous games, and the possibility of Scrabble finally uploading their own application. But in the meantime, my unquenched Scrabulous addiction is going to eat away at my soul. Maybe I’ll go outside for a change.

A quick note: This is my first blog post, and although it was way ahead of schedule my friend’s scoop seemed a worthy event to hurry the launch. Don’t worry, I have a small continent’s worth of material that’ll be uploaded within the next couple weeks. Please check back for earth-shattering, mind-bending, Noble-prize-worthy (OK… maybe that’s pushing it…) information about anything and everything related to kicking ass and taking names in web 2.0.

Edit: Its currently 3:01 and the app is still down.

Edit 2: 3:26 PST and Scrabulous appears to have been as techcrunch puts it: “joined the deadpool” for over an hour!

Edit 3: 3:41 PST I just got an IM pointing out its been going up and down for the last 5 minutes. I’m trying to contact the creators as we speak.

Edit 4: 3:57 PST The IM seems to have been wrong. As far as I can see the app has still not come back up. We’ll stay tuned and are waiting for a response but in the mean time people on the 47,000 person facebook group are mixed in whether they think the app is down for good or just repairs.

Edit 5: 4:51 PST Scrabulous does seem to be going up and down. Several people have suggested that it is because they have to pull the servers one by one and the scrabulous people are dragging it out w/ this redundancy. I wouldn’t even know how to comment on this speculation.

Edit 6: 5:43 PST Played my first Scrabulous move since this morning. Looks like this Application might live to see at least one more dawn. However, its some consolation that I wasn’t the only one who was fooled (see mashable) http://mashable.com/2008/01/16/scrabulous-shutdown/

 backlink: http://www.brianzafron.com/blog/?p=3