HP Twitter Study: Weak Link Between Popularity And Influence. Posted by Tom Foremski - August 5, 2010 I'm a big fan of Bernardo Huberman, director of HP Labs' Social Computing Lab, and the work of his team. HP has been applying rigorous scientific practices to the study of social media and it has a gold mine of research open to the public. It is worth emphasizing that HP's studies are designed to the highest scientific standards; they are not isolated case studies or the musings of a "social media expert.
" They typically involve the study of very large numbers of people and thus they reveal some fundamental aspects of our increasingly online culture, and our common humanity. The latest study from Dr Huberman and team is on what makes a Tweet or a Twitter user influential. The study found: - Most Twitter users are passive, they do not re-Tweet. - There is a difference between popularity and influence. . - To become influential, Twitter users must somehow persuade their followers to re-Tweet. The Conclusion: Foremski's Take: Please see SVW: Bernardo Huberman: Social Dynamics In The Age Of The Web. Posted by Tom Foremski - September 12, 2009 Fascinating talk by Bernardo Huberman, Director of the Social Computing Lab at Hewlett-Packard.
He presents the results of several scientific studies of how large numbers of users behave on the web. The results are very interesting and raise questions about the effectiveness of viral marketing; they reveal patterns in e-mail messaging; the half-life of popular stories on Digg (about 70 minutes); the influence of ratings on popularity; changing sentiment in reviews, how public opinion can be manipulated, and much more. Don't be put off by the date of this talk: January 2008.
It remains relevant because the studies are focused on behaviors of large numbers of users at sites such as Amazon, Facebook, and Digg - and haven't changed. They reveal what appear to be fundamental behaviors that could very well be hard-wired into our humanity - or at least our online humanity. Here is my recent interview with Mr Huberman. Twitter Study: Interview With Bernardo Huberman, HP Social Computing Labs Chief. Posted by Tom Foremski - April 6, 2010 Hewlett-Packard recently published a research paper: Predicting the Future With Social Media by Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman.
The study analyzed 2.89 million tweets from 1.2 million users referencing 24 movies released over a three month period. The researchers discovered that the rate of Tweets could predict the success of movies prior to their release, and also spot sleeper movies that grew successful over time. The quality of the predictions was significantly better than any other measure such as the Hollywood Stock Exchange. HP believes the same methods could be used to predict product success and election results.
[Please see: HP Study Shows Twitter Predicts Success Of Movies] I spoke with Bernardo Huberman, head of HP's Social Computing Lab, about the Twitter research project. . - We're very interested in social attention and how attention is allocated, especially in a very fragmented media world that we now have. - - -Please see: HP Study Shows Twitter Predicts Success Of Movies. Posted by Tom Foremski - April 5, 2010 Computer scientists at Hewlett-Packard recently published a research study that showed that Twitter can predict the success of a movie better than any other measure, including the Hollywood Stock Exchange, considered the gold standard in the movie industry.
The paper "Predicting the Future With Social Media" by Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman, analyzed 2.89 million tweets from 1.2 million users referencing 24 movies released over a three month period. The study looked at the pre-launch buzz such as the release of trailers, it found: - Very few retweets because "people tend to describe their own expectations and experiences, which are not necessarily propaganda. " - Urls in the pre-release tweets didn't seem to have much effect on popularity of the movie, a surprising discovery since pre-launch publicity should contribute to success in the box office.
The study was "consistently better at predicting the actual values than the historical HSX prices. " Thought Leader - HP's Bernardo Huberman: Studies Of Mass Social Behavior On The Internet. Posted by Tom Foremski - September 11, 2009 Is it possible to describe aspects of human behavior through algorithms? Hewlett-Packard's Bernardo Huberman believes you can and he has the studies to prove it. Mr Huberman has one of the more interesting jobs in the computer industry. He heads up the Social Computing Lab within HP Laboratories. It's a team of about a dozen researchers studying how people behave on the Internet. They look at fairly ordinary activities such as the number of YouTube downloads, the number of "Diggs" a web page receives, or the number of times people upload and share content.
From such mundane activities his team can derive algorithms that seem to uncover aspects of human nature and provide a glimpse into things about ourselves that could be universal, that could very well be possibly hard-wired into our very being. The key to this research is that the studies are extremely large, the sample sizes are in the many tens of millions.
"Attention is a limited resource.