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As Facebook, Twitter and the like spawn millions of amateur critics, Anton Bitel explains how social media is becoming an effective tool for predicting box-office performance.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr Bernardo Huberman may hardly be a household name, but as consulting professor of applied physics at Stanford University and director of the Social Computing Lab at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Hollywood has certainly been taking notice of his recent research into attention and influence in the new online social media. \u201cOur whole recent focus is at the intersection of information technology and social behaviour\u2014the notion of social attention, and how attention is allocated to content\u2014if only because information is now so plentiful and free, but attention is so scarce,\u201d he tells movieScope. \u201cAs part of that, I always had this notion that where attention goes, you can predict the future in a sense, if only because so many people are focused on that. And the reason I chose movies is because you can predict something very concrete, which is box-office revenue.\u201d.<\/p>\n Huberman\u2019s co-authored article \u2018Predicting the Future With Social Media\u2019, published in March 2010, demonstrates a direct, measurable correlation between the number of \u2018tweets\u2019 referencing a given film title in any week, and the film\u2019s box-office takings the following weekend. Indeed, the predictions of his analytic model, which were further fine-tuned when the sentiments (positive, negative or neutral) of the tweets were taken into account, proved considerably more accurate than pre-existing predictive models, including the industry\u2019s gold standard, the Hollywood Stock Exchange. And while the study has taken Twitter as its focus, Huberman is quick to point out that \u201cthis can be done in any social medium.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Huberman has the industry\u2019s attention. \u201cEven though I\u2019m not allowed to discuss particular specific names, we are in discussions with two big entertainment companies in Hollywood about the licensing of the technology.\u201d Nor is it just Tinseltown that has come knocking. \u201cAnyone interested in present-day marketing is interested in this, to know the future of a product, how people will feel about something, the rate at which people will pay attention to something.\u201d<\/p>\n The most surprising fact to emerge from the study was just how little impact, relatively speaking, the pre-release dissemination via Twitter of promotional materials and URLs has on a film\u2019s subsequent box-office performance. Evidently Twitter has not yet proved a good platform for manipulating opinion. \u201cSo far,\u201d Huberman comments, \u201cthey haven\u2019t been able to sway people one way or the other, at least through this kind of channel.\u201d Perhaps part of the solution from a film marketer\u2019s perspective would be to determine which tweeters have the most influence, and then to co-opt their support. As it happens, Huberman\u2019s next co-authored research paper, \u2018Influence and Passivity in Social Media\u2019 (Aug 2010), is concerned precisely with a model for \u201chow to identify influential people in a social network.\u201d Now, it seems, Huberman\u2019s own work is having an influence on an industry always desperate for attention.<\/p>\n Further reading: \u2019Predicting the Future With Social Media\u2019 (March 2010), Bernardo Huberman, Sitaram Asur. \u2018Influence and Passivity in Social Media\u2019 (August 2010), Daniel M. Romero, Wojciech Galuba, Bernardo Huberman, Sitaram Asur<\/p>\n First appeared in movieScope Magazine, Issue 19 MovieScope magazine.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Facebook, Twitter and the like spawn millions of amateur critics, Anton Bitel explains how social media is becoming an effective tool for predicting box-office performance. Dr Bernardo Huberman may hardly be a household name, but as consulting professor of applied physics at Stanford University and director of the Social Computing Lab at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[224,55,223,145,173],"series":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-of-mouth","tag-dr-bernardo-huberman","tag-facebook","tag-moviescope","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/www.productionbase.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/TOTI-Podcast-Artwork.png","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":[],"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/www.productionbase.co.uk\/blog\/feed\/podcast\/turn-on-tune-in-2","embedCode":"The Economics Of Attention<\/a><\/blockquote>