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Real-World Outcomes Predicted Using Social Media
Hugh Pickens writes "Kevin Kelly writes that researchers at the Social Computing Lab at HP Labs in Palo Alto have found that social media content can predict real world outcomes. In their study, the researchers built a model that used chatter from Twitter to predict accurately the box-office revenues of upcoming movies weeks before the movies were released. When the sentiment of the tweet was factored in (how favorable it was toward the new movie), the prediction was even more exact. To quantify the sentiments in 3 million tweets, the team used anonymous workers from Amazon's Mechanical Turk to rate a sample of tweets, and then trained an algorithmic classifier to derive a rating for the rest. But predicting box office receipts may be only the beginning. 'This method can be extended to a large panoply of topics [PDF], ranging from the future rating of products to agenda setting and election outcomes,' the researchers write. 'At a deeper level, this work shows how social media expresses a collective wisdom which, when properly tapped, can yield an extremely powerful and accurate indicator of future outcomes.'"
These social network predictions were already predicted by the late Mr. Asimov. ;)
At a deeper level, this work shows how social media expresses a collective wisdom which, when properly tapped, can yield an extremely powerful and accurate indicator of future outcomes.
In other words - Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
It works until marketing departments at big companies start gaming it in a big way.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Forget the mechanical turk. Just tell me the marketing budget of a movie and how many screens it's going to open on and I'll give you an estimate of the take. It's a pretty strong correlation on large-release movies.
Hollywood has worked so hard to remove the actual quality of the movie from the equation. Get the movie onto a lot of screens early and spend a lot on advertising. Get people in to see it on the first 3 days (Fri, Sat Sun, or Wed-Sun in some cases) before any info about the movie that you don't control (i.e. other than promos) gets out.
Many movies make around half their total theatrical take in the first weekend of release.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
It works until marketing departments at big companies start gaming it in a big way.
No need to game the system when you've already gamed the users! How do you think all these twitterers know to talk about movies before they're released?
The quote in the article is such crap:
At a deeper level, this work shows how social media expresses a collective wisdom which, when properly tapped, can yield an extremely powerful and accurate indicator of future outcomes.
No it doesn't show that at all. It shows that what is popular in twitter is popular in the real world. In other words, it shows that twitter is close enough to a representative sample of the general population for many practical purposes. That is all. It doesn't have anything to do with collective wisdom, nor does it help you predict any outcome unless it is primarily dependent on popular opinion.