12 Aug 2009

Twinge-tastic!!!

I was excited and somewhat bemused to discover yesterday that Lola has been given a "karma" rating of 68 - indeed the top "karma" score for a physical and dance theatre show at the Edinburgh Fringe. Ironic really given that the woman herself didn't have the cleanest of conscience.

This "karma" rating comes courtesy of EdTwinge, "a real-time, Twitter-based review service". The site collects all the zillions of tweets sent about the festival and reveals who is getting the most "noise" on Twitter. It then generates a "karma" rating for each show ranking them in order of positivity.

The site states that it believes that lots of people saying the same thing is much more meaningful than just one or two. Indeed EdTwinge claims to let you "put your trust in the wisdom on the many" - the topic of much discussion yesterday with articles in both The Guardian and The Stage commenting on the ploriferation of audience based reviews as a direct result of social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. Mark Shenton from The Stage stated in his blog "it will shortly be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff". He does have a point of course but I for one am all for audience based reviews (probably because I write them). Although like every professional critics review they should be used as a guide only and read in conjunction with other commentary. But at the end of the day isn't it what you, the individual audience member, thinks of the show that really counts?

Alas our "karma" rating has taken a bit of a nose dive today with a rating of 49 (down to 6th spot). Come on Edinburgh - make some "noise" for Lola!!

By Gemma

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