This season American Idol fans can now vote for their favorites on Facebook by “liking” them via AmericanIdol.com. And, of course, Idol is one of the most tweeted shows on TV. So a couple social media companies are mining the likes and tweets to predict the results.
Likester, as the name implies, tracks like activity across Facebook — so you can see what your friends are liking, what everyone is liking, and what’s trending in real time. You can even track likes against location. Likester calls itself a “global popularity engine,” and with millions of likes flowing into the system, it’s seems to live up to the billing.
While Idol’s Facebook voting makes up a small subset of the total votes (most are SMS), Likester is able to count “likes” to exact numbers. Earlier Thursday, Likester predicted that Jacob Lusk will get the boot with the lowest like count of 26,234 — and sure enough, Jacob was eliminated. The most-liked contestant was Scotty McCreery with 235,332.
This isn’t the first time that Likester nailed it. Two weeks ago, it accurately predicted all members of the bottom three. Last week, it had Jacob and Casey at the bottom, but incorrectly predicted that Jacob would be eliminated (Casey was.) It’s starting to get a little too good perhaps, and we wonder when it will start getting a little more press.
Over at the social TV company Yap.tv, they’re taking a different approach. By mining tweets about the contestants, Yap.tv uses sentiment analysis to gauge the audience’s reaction.
According to its analysis (above), Jacob should’ve been safe — he was on top with the most tweets, and his positive and negative reviews were in line with the other contestants. Instead, Jacob ended up on the bottom. This inverse effect also happened with Pia Toscano, who topped the list last month but got the boot. So in a way, Yak.tv is accurately predicting the results, just in an entirely opposite way it expected.
As more Americans engage with social media around TV, it’s becoming a large-enough audience to yield a semi-statistical sense of viewers’ impressions and reactions. American Idol is just the beginning.