Social buzz was poor predictor of Oscar winners compared with gambling sites
23 Feb 2015
VARIETY reports this morning that, leading up to Sunday night’s 87th Annual Academy Awards, Facebook and Twitter — along with third-party social analysis researchers Adobe, Hootsuite and Way to Blue — issued predictions of Oscar winners based on digital buzz, but of their 29 predictions for the six major categories (Twitter didn’t have a pick for best director), the forecasts got only 13 correct.By contrast, states VARIETY, betting sites, based on their pre-Oscars odds, were far more reliable. PredictWise, which aggregates info from U.K.-based Betfair, Hollywood Stock Exchange and other “prediction markets,” correctly predicted 20 of 24 total Oscars winners, including for the major categories.