Twitter Saves the Dollhouse

Fans Rally Online for Second Season of FOX Show

May 18, 2009 D. Yvette Wohn

The FOX television series Dollhouse was renewed for a second season backed on strong support from the web community.

The decision was largely influenced by the huge numbers of supporters using using social networking tools on the Internet such as Twitter and Facebook. As of this afternoon, one of the bigger Dollhouse fan sites (there are several of them) on Facebook had more than 412,000 fans.

How Twitter Supported the Dollhouse

One of the major Internet-based campaigns was a petition hosted by BuddyTV. The petition was slightly different from conventional web petitions in that it not only asked people to sign (comment on) the petition, but also "tweet" about the petition on Twitter. Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows users to write short posts of up to 140 characters. Users can access Twitter through the Twitter website, or use text messaging on their cell phones to send a text message to Twitter, which then appears as a post. These short posts are called "tweets."

Dollhouse fans not only tweeted about their desire for continuation of the TV series, but also created Twitter accounts for the characters of the show and used Twitter to live-blog while the program was on air. Due to the high web traffic that Dollhouse fans were creating, "Dolhouse" was one of the top keywords on Twitter during the past few days.

Sharing Emotions on Twitter

Twitter was also used to connect people who had shared interest in the TV series. By searching the term "Dollhouse." users could find other people who tweeting about the Dollhouse, and then look at their profiles. Twitter has a function in which you can "follow" someone, which is similar to an RSS feed.

After the renewal of Dollhouse was announced this afternoon, people tweeted about it at least once every 30 seconds. "Dollhouse might be the 'lowest-rated in-season scripted drama to ever get a renewal on a major broadcast network,' but I'm still happy :)" wrote Twiter user Ccmclean. Rmamartinez wrote, "Well, it ain't no Buffy but the Dollhouse has found a place in my heart and, I predict, there is cult status for it in the future."

FOX Also Uses Twitter

While most of the "tweeting" taking place on Twitter was generated by users, FOX (Twitter ID: FoxBroadcasting) also played a part in utilizing Twitter to reach out to its audience by announcing its 2009 fall schedule through Twitter. Although the company issued a press release, it chose to retweet a Twitter member's website that copied the information from the company's website. A retweet is when one posts the same thing that someone has already tweeted about. Usually, the abbreviation "RT" is used in order to show that the tweet was originated elsewhere.

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Dollhouse becomes top Twiter term