Paramount Studios recently used twitter to offer advanced screening tickets for their new sci-fi release 'Super 8' directed by J.J. Abrams.

Twitter has become a mainstream 'news portal' for conversation as millions connect with each other and share their likes, and personal daily diaries.

For Paramount, twitter presents a good opportunity to reach out to an audience that engages with topical discussion, and with a sponsored 'trending topic', this can create a lot of buzz, especially for a movie release.

This kind of online marketing is new in the movie distribution circuit. Twitter can provide a good outlet to market special offers, advanced tickets and one-off competitions but does it have a viral nature?

Twitter is also indexed into google in realtime, which is also another plus for people using the service, as very discussions are highlighted. The micro-social network is also responsible for creating trends in web search.