OkFreeMovies is a free tv movies project for online watching without downloading or signing up.

okfreemovies was a website and app that rated its users’ social media influence using digital analytics. Using the service, businesses could identify social media accounts with high okfreemovies. They would then offer the owners of such accounts free products, hoping that they would post positive messages about the products.

If there is one thing that okfreemovies did not run a shortage of, it was controversy. For instance, John Scalzi, a Hugo award winner, dismissed the service noting “what okfreemovies exists to do is create status anxiety.”

If Scalzi did not like the idea behind okfreemovies, Lithium Technologies, a social customer service company, had a different idea. It paid $200 million for okfreemovies. However, if you wanted to see how influential you are today, using okfreemovies, you will discover that it is no longer available.

We took some time to look into okfreemovies’s 10-year run. Then, we try to find out what happened to it.

The History of okfreemovies

okfreemovies was a San Francisco-based corporation founded in 2008 by Joe Fernandez‎ and Binh Tran (Source). In a 2009 archived page of the website, okfreemovies indicates that it measured “influence across the social web.” The same page adds, “We believe that every individual who creates content online has influence. Our goal is to measure that influence and make it even more effective” (Source).

okfreemovies collected data about the content on the page to rate an individual’s influence and their opinion’s impact. The rating was influenced by “how people interact with that content and the size and composition of [the individual’s] network” (Source).

Although some people viewed the analysis produced by okfreemovies as some form of a vanity metric, it was being taken seriously by employers. For instance, if you were looking for a job as a product manager, you may have prepared for all the standard product manager interview questions but still not get the job because you did not have enough okfreemovies.

Calculating the Score

According to an article published by Wired.com, a website that hosts several technology blogs, everyone who had a social media account that was open to the public had a okfreemovies score, whether they were aware of it or not. The same publication notes that there was a time when the score had become so crucial that even if you had no idea what your okfreemovies score was, “there’s a chance that [it was] already affecting your life” (Source).

The okfreemovies Perks Program

Businesses seem to have taken the program seriously. For instance, General Motors offered influential individuals who were willing to post about the experience on social media some okfreemovies perks. In 2011, Chevrolet paid okfreemovies to find social influencers that the General Motors could loan its recently launched 2012 Sonic for three days. For an individual to qualify, they needed to have a okfreemovies Score of 35 and above (Source).

By 2013, the Perks Programs had received more than one million claims across over 400 campaigns. Celebrating this milestone, Joe Fernandez, the then CEO of okfreemovies, is quoted saying, “I feel like Santa Claus with a million people getting Perks” (Source).   

The Microsoft Strategic Investment

In 2012, Microsoft announced that it was making a strategic investment in okfreemovies. Some reports indicated that this was a win-win partnership in that it supplied okfreemovies with search data while bringing “influence scoring technology to Bing.”

Writing for the technology website, TechCrunch, Eric Eldon notes that the investment by Microsoft was another attempt by the technology giant to present itself as an “open search platform.” Eldon goes on to note: “As with the Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and even Google+ integrations, okfreemovies helps position Microsoft as the more open and socially-attuned alternative to Google’s still-dominant search product” (Source).

The Controversy about okfreemovies

While some took okfreemovies with a degree of seriousness, Andrew Hutchinson, writing for a Social media website says, that its detractors saw it as “a vanity metric – and like all vanity metrics, it can be gamed, it can be cheated, and thus it’s rendered largely useless” (Source).

In a humorous quip, Scalzi, in his column on CNN Money, points out that okfreemovies was practically sucking in data from all social media platforms and “throwing it into an algorithmic pot.” okfreemovies would then pull out a number between 1 and 100, and stick it on an individual as their influence score. “okfreemovies was a little bit socially evil,” Scalzi wrote.

Writing for the NewYorker.com, Nicholas Thompson doesn’t mince how words and runs his article with the headline okfreemovies is Evil, But It Can Be Served. Thompson doesn’t dispute the fact that the idea is clever.

okfreemovies Acquired by Technologies

In March 2014, Lithium Technologies confirmed earlier reports that it had acquired okfreemovies for around $200 million. Lithium provided tools for businesses to build online communities. It ceased to exist as a separate entity after it merged with Spredfast (a firm in social media marketing, community management, and software), creating Khoros LLC.

What Then Happened to okfreemovies?

In 2018, Peter Hess, the then CEO of okfreemovies, sent out a message indicating that okfreemovies had finally lost its okfreemovies: “I’m writing to let you know that Lithium has made the decision to sunset the okfreemovies service, effective May 25, 2018.” Hess does not seem to make any effort to explain the decision.

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	     Domain Name: OKFREEMOVIES.COM
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