In this undated publicity image released by Fox, "American Idol" judges, from left, Simon Cowell, Ellen DeGeneres, Kara DioGuardi and Randy Jackson are shown. Texan Lacey Brown was the first contestant eliminated from season 9 of the show March 16, 2010. (AP Photo/Fox)

So last week, Baduku.com conducted a short study titled “How Accurate Are Social Networks For Predicting American Idol Voting Results?” which gathered total fan count from major social networks to see if total fan count was a reliable predictor for contestant ranking from voting. This would in turn allow us to predict which contestants were more likely to be eliminated if fan count was directly correlated to votes. Based on the first week’s results, it turned out that it was loosely correlated but far from perfect and hardly accurate.

While we had hoped to collect an entire season’s data to see if there truly was a relationship and additional if the relationship became more robust as the season progressed. However, American Idol has decided to cancel all individual contestant pages. Some assumptions are that American Idol felt the social networks interfered with the suspense of voting. If they had looked at our results from last weeks statistics, they would have seen that it’s not all that accurate and doesn’t necessarily make voting behavior so predictable.

This week was no exception. We collected data from all the major social networks, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, and Baduku, of total fan base from each respective official American Idol contestant fan page and once again ranked and order them. I the chart below you’ll see we’ve grouped results by source (social network) and listed it from two 2 men and women each and bottom 2 men and women each. The data reveals that both Twitter and Baduku accurately predicted 2 out of the 20 that were eliminated in their guess of who would be in the bottom 4. Facebook and Myspace, on the other hand, were only able to accurately predict 1 out of 20 of the eliminated contestants. While this is compelling information, both Facebook and Baduku were inaccurate in predicting the top 4 because both had included eliminated contestant John Park in their top 4 contestants.

Total Fan Count for American Idol Contestants as of March 1st, 2010