How Accurate Are Social Networks For Predicting American Idol Voting Results?
If President Barak Obama’s election campaign taught us anything, it’s that social media is a powerful tool that can shape the future of the United States and the world at large. However, it’s surprising that one of the Nations greatest phenomenons of the past decade has yet to capitalize on the power and virility of social media. That is until now.
After eight successful seasons, “American Idol” has finally lifted the bans that previously silenced contestants from directly communicating with a fan base via social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
While this move to embrace social networking is relatively late and still tightly managed, the results will be astronomical.
Previously, voting for contestants was very much a shot-in-the-dark, with no real metrics to gauge a performer’s standings. However, with instant accessibility to statistics such as total fans, friends, followers and opinions via real-time streams, viewers will get a glimpse into the relative popularity of each of the contenders.
Additionally, as the disparity grows between fan favorites and those up for elimination – as measured by social metrics – social media could become not only a relatively accurate predictor of who will get cut each week, but fans can now track and actively rally support to help save contestants from the chopping block.
Baduku.com, an opinions engine which ranks pubic opinions in real-time, compiled a list of total fans, friends, followers and viewers from top social networking websites to show us how these contestants rank as the first big week of performances and cuts approaches.
As it stands, some of the social media leaders across all the social networks have included John Park, Lacey Brown, Didi Benami, Casey James and also this season’s favored to win contestants, Crystal Bowersox and Andrew Garcia.
However, some of the contestants who are falling far behind in social media such asJoe Munoz, Paige Miles, Michelle Delamore, and Lilly Scott could find themselves wishing they had given more effort toward building their online fan following.
After this first week of voting, if it turns out that social networking is a reliable and accurate indicator of success, we will certainly see a trend in contestants becoming more pro-active about building their online fan base as well as overall online presence. After all, harnessing the power of social media may just be the edge needed to save any contestant from elimination.
*Totals collected as of February 21st, 2010 11:00pm from all official contestant pages sponsored by “American Idol”. A list of these pages is available at http://headlineplanet.com/home/2010/02/18/american-idol-reveals-twitter-facebook-accounts-for-top-24/
man, this list is inaccurate. the facebook count only lists those made by AI for the top24. Andrew has more than 20,000 fans now on FB and twitter (if you count the original fan page created before AI9 or Andrew’s original twitter page)
@TheDawg
Actually it is extremely accurate, it’s just not a representative sample which is what we think you meant to say. However, just like all statistics and most political polls we can’t expect them to ask every single person in the nation to get a good prediction for election standings, we have to rely on some acceptable margin of error.
We aren’t sure yet if they are reliable and that’s really the question here, can a few sources of metrics be enough to make an accurate prediction and also which source is the most reliable? I guess we’ll find out soon if there is an inkling of correlation and still we’ll have to keep tracking it over time to see which support is the most accurate or if the case may be none of them are accurate at all for reliably predicting winners.
I think this sort of thing is interesting and possibly indispensable for getting a better picture of how a contestant’s fan base might be likely to buoy a poor performance for a week or two.
I don’t think this will ever be a reliable metric for predicting elimination though. I don’t think it’s responsive enough. People might “fan” someone one week and then forget about them. (Also, not vote.)
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Thank you for useful info.
Good article Thank you so much
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