I think the idea that Wikipedia activity
(or other social media activity) can be used as some kind of predictor of
public popularity is probably relatively sound. If something is attracting a
lot of public interest, then one might expect that a certain proportion of interested
people to be editors of Wikipedia (or users of Twitter, etc) leading to a
corresponding uptick in activity in those spaces. Of course the editors of
Wikipedia aren’t a “typical” demographic sample, so probably things
that appeal more to the Wikipedia demographics are more likely to manifest as
Wikipedia activity, but for very popular movies the target market is somewhat
similar to the Wikipedia editor demographic so it probably correlates OK.
However, that might account for the lower ability to predict the box office for
less popular movies – maybe the audiences for those movies aren’t statistically
as likely to be Wikipedia editors?
But I am less sure whether there is any
practical use for this finding in relation to movies. Where are the Wikipedia
editors getting their advance movie information from? Presumably from the
marketing activity of the movie itself. Which movies get the big marketing
budget? The expected blockbusters. It’s something of a self-fulfilling
prophecy I suspect.
From the point of view of the movie
makers, there isn’t much they can learn from the level of WP activity because
from their perspective their money has largely been spent long ago on making the
movie. They need to be able to predict its success a couple of years earlier,
long before there will be a single edit on WP or any tweeting. I guess my point
is that the ability to predict something is really only useful if the
prediction can be made in advance of making an important decision. A really
exciting result would be the ability to predict stock price movements from WP
editing behaviour! We could use the profits from that to fund the journal,
which could have a policy of publishing only unaffiliated authors as we would
all be retired on our stock market riches! J
Kerry
From:
wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Taha Yasseri
Sent: Wednesday, 7 November 2012
10:34 PM
To: Research into Wikimedia
content and communities
Subject: [Wiki-research-l]
Wikipedia Used to Predict Movie Box OfficeRevenues
Hello Everybody,
In the temporary silence after hot election and Wikipedia research Journal
debates and discussions (I hope at least the second one continues), I would
like to use the opportunity to introduce our new manuscript,
titled "Early Prediction of Movie Box Office Success based on Wikipedia
Activity Big Data" and available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.0970.
There is also a rather fair review of this work at http://www.technologyreview.com/view/507076/now-wikipedia-used-to-predict-movie-box-office-revenues.
As always, comments, critics, encouragements, etc, are most welcome (if you are
shy, please write me off-list).
Bests,
Taha Yasseri
Dr. Taha Yasseri.
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