Now, Twitter can predict a box office hit

NEW YORK, USA: The rate at which tweets about a movie hit the micro-blogging sensation twitter can be used to accurately predict that film's performance at the box office, according to an HP study.

Researchers at Hewlett Packard (HP) studied 3 million tweets - about 25 movies, including Avatar and found the rate at which messages were produced could be used to accurately predict the box office takings before the film opened, a BBC report said quoting the HP research.

"Our predictions were incredibly close," Bernardo Huberman, head of the social computing lab at HP, was quoted as saying by BBC News. Giving an example, he said, the system predicted that zombie film The Crazies would take $16.8m in its first weekend in the US. It actually took $16.06m.

The team forecast that romantic drama Dear John would take $30.71m in its first US weekend. It took $30.46m.

"We developed algorithms to analyse these tweets and measure the rate at which they were produced. Our intuition was that the faster people tweet, the more likely they are to go and see it," said Dr Huberman.

The teams were also able to forecast the ongoing success of a film, including its second weekend revenues, by doing what is known as sentiment analysis.