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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.'"
Predicting what a bunch of assholes who use twitter will do.
These social network predictions were already predicted by the late Mr. Asimov. ;)
The larger your sample size the more accurate your results tends to be. Fascinating.
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
Wikipedia says:
The Delphi method is a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts.
Of course, in this case the "experts" are the movie-going public, who know more about their tastes in movies that anyone is Hollywood. The Delphi method depends on large panels, and n this case th researchers are using large panels indeed. Finally, the iteration is provided by the later tweeters reading earlier tweets before they post.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
However, do we really want to always be driven by public opinion?
I wasn't sure - so I checked twitter and it turns out that we do.
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Putting the fact that increasing sample size does not necessarily increase the power of a predictor, you apparently didn't get the point of their method.
So method A was to simply "grep RamboIX" in these 3 million tweets. That alone already correlated to the box office outcome. However, that also catches messages like "RamboIX suxx, no way I'm going to see or even download this".
So method B was to use machine learning algorithms, combined with some initial work by human drones, to assign a degree of "positiveness" to each message about RamboIX.
While this has nothing to do with increasing sample size, it took the accuracy of the prediction to a whole new level.
I for one think this is a pretty great idea.
Collective wisdom? In today's popular culture? Surely there must be a better term than that.
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.