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
arent 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 arent 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. Its something of a self-fulfilling prophecy I suspect.
From the point of view of the movie makers, there isnt
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! :-)
Kerry
_____
From: wiki-research-l-bounces(a)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-mo
vie-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.
---------------------------------------------
www.phy.bme.hu/~yasseri <http://www.phy.bme.hu/%7Eyasseri>
Department of Theoretical Physics
Institute of Physics
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Budafoki út 8.
H-1111 Budapest, Hungary
tel: +36 1 463 4110
fax: +36 1 463 3567
---------------------------------------------