Twitter predicts box office hits .

Old adage ,word of mouth popularizes ,is proved with the aid of technology.

This may also result in influencing the behavioral pattern of the individuals by enticing them to go with the herd.

Also the danger of media manipulating individual’s thinking is around the corner.( this is being done already in a comparatively on a smaller scale)

While it is fun to predict, life will lose its meaning when it becomes too predictable.

Story:

Micro-blogging service Twitter can be used to predict the future box-office takings of blockbuster films, according to researchers at Hewlett Packard (HP).

The computer scientists studied 3 million messages – known as tweets – about 25 movies, including Avatar.

They found the rate at which messages were produced could be used to accurately predict the box office takings before the film opened.

Further analysis of the content of the messages could predict ongoing success.

“Our predictions were incredibly close,” Bernardo Huberman, head of the social computing lab at HP, told BBC News.

Word of mouth builds audience Jan Saxton Adams Media Research

For example, he said, the system predicted that zombie film The Crazies would take $16.8m in its first weekend in the US. It actually took $16.06m.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8612292.stm

Related;

http://arxiv.org/