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MoviePass Wants To Gather a Whole Lot of Data About Its Users (fortune.com)

Posted by msmash on from the too-much-confidence dept.

An anonymous reader writes: MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe thinks his service's rapid growth will continue, projecting earlier this month that MoviePass will have 5 million subscribers by the end of 2018, and account for around 20% of all movie ticket purchases. But some of those future subscribers might be concerned about his company's tactics, which Lowe recently said includes tracking users' location before and after a trip to the movies. Lowe's comments, originally reported by Media Play News, were made at the Entertainment Finance Forum on March 2 in Hollywood. They came during a panel titled "Data is the New Oil: How Will MoviePass Monetize It?" Lowe's answer to that question, in part, was that "our bigger vision is to build a night at the movies," including by guiding users to a meal before or after seeing a film.

Lowe said that was possible because "we get an enormous amount of information. Since we mail you the card, we know your home address . . . we know the makeup of that household, the kids, the age groups, the income. It's all based on where you live. It's not that we ask that. You can extrapolate that. "Then," Lowe continued, "Because you are being tracked in your GPS by the phone . . . we watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards, and so we know the movies you watch. We know all about you. We don't sell that data. What we do is we use that data to market film."

9 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Share an account, so easy! by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Get a card sent to a P.O. Box, pay using a prepaid card. Put the app on a cheap secondary phone which doesn't even need service. Use the theater's WiFi to confirm you're there.

    That way, you can share an account (i.e. card + burner phone) among an entire family or group of neighbors and friends. Turn off the phone when not "in use" to turn off the tracking function.

    Suck on that, Mitchie-boy.

    1. Re:Share an account, so easy! by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Meanwhile, I got very cheap movies for a month or two... and the next service will be there, ripe for the picking. The real losers? Wall St. investors -- and it's good when they lose out on services that steal customer data.

    2. Re:Share an account, so easy! by tgeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Get a card sent to a P.O. Box, pay using a prepaid card. Put the app on a cheap secondary phone which doesn't even need service. Use the theater's WiFi to confirm you're there.

      That way, you can share an account (i.e. card + burner phone) among an entire family or group of neighbors and friends. Turn off the phone when not "in use" to turn off the tracking function.

      Suck on that, Mitchie-boy.

      Fuck that! I'll just spend my money elsewhere.

    3. Re:Share an account, so easy! by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it is fuckers like YOU who are ruining it for everyone. Fuckers like YOU who allow the corporations to track us all the time in order to save a small amount of money. Pathetic.

    4. Re: Share an account, so easy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Thatâ(TM)s absolute nonsense. There are plenty of businesses that operate just fine in places like Europe who value privacy. Note the value part, every Euro company is extremely concerned about privacy because people will notice and take offense if their info is sold. It requires no legislation, just a culture that actually cares about privacy.

      Meanwhile in the US, you have companies all over the place violating our privacy in every corner and assholes like you who claim this is good, thatâ(TM)s he only way to make money, when it isnâ(TM)t.

  2. Re:So? by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Better yet, use it in a way that gets you the bennies but deprives the company of your data. i.e. turn the app off when not in use, or install it on an old "burner" phone.

    Remember, the only people you're hurting are Wall Street banks and VCs who sink their money into services where you're the product. Yeah, if enough people do it, MoviePass will go bust, but might as well get a nice run with Wall Street money while it lasts.

  3. Wanted feature in Mobile OS: by Alain+Williams · · Score: 3, Interesting

    run every app in its own container where I can specify what the external world looks like from within the container. So: GPS some location/track that I have chosen (regardless of the hardware GPS even being switched on), sound & camera virtual and maybe hearing/seeing some pre-recorded rubbish, contacts database - maybe unique to the container, ditto call log, ... Ie I want to control what the app perceives through the 'phones sensors.

  4. Another Reason Not to Own a Smart Phone by DERoss · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I do not own a smart phone. I do not even own a dumb phone. I can still order movie tickets from Fandango via my PC.

    No, I am not a Luddite. My entire 40+ year career was in computer software. I just do not have the need to be in constant contact 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

  5. Re:Most of my friends work Seattle Hundreds... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What Earthly good is money if you have no time to enjoy it? There's a fine line between industry and sado-masochism. 90hr/wk is the latter, plus after a certain time at the office, you stop being effective.

    This isn't being industrious -- this is a martydom contest about who can stay in the office longest, even if they're playing on their phones 50% of the time.

    "Success" is having time for family and leisure as well as making a difference. Working 90hr/wk for a bunch of people who'll likely kick you out the door at age 50 is just sad.