A new study claims that movie box office revenue can be predicted by analyzing social media, such as Twitter. Two computer scientists from the HP Labs have published Predicting the Future with Social Media. They analyzed almost 3 million tweets from more than 1 million users about 24 films. Their conclusion: Twitter is the best method of predicting box office revenue, even better than the Hollywood Stock Exchange (hsx.com).
If these computer whizzes from Palo Alto are right, what’s next? Could Twitter analysis bear fruit for those trading movie box office futures with real money on the Cantor Exchange and Trend Exchange? Wall Street already employs sophisticated computer programs to analyze data and make trading decisions in various markets. Could the same be done with movie box office futures based on Twitter analysis?
One of the scientists behind the study thinks not, according to an interview by Tom Foremski at siliconAngle, because the study examined such a large number of tweets. But Jabcat imagines robots scouring Twitter, employing sophisticated sampling methods to analyze tweets that refer to individual flicks, weighing the positive vs. negative buzz and calculating box office revenue based on an algorithm written by a mathematical genius at MIT or Cambridge.
Talk about gaming the system!
Perhaps the movie industry will claim this study is another reason why the Commodity Futures Trading Commission should slow down and weigh the pros and cons more carefully before approving box office futures. Approval was expected any day, with trading to commence shortly, but the film industry has made a last minute push to delay approval. For more on the regulatory process and other news-info links, see Jabcat’s Box Office Futures page.
Read the study: Predicting the Future With Social Media
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