Past studies have shown Twitter users are pretty good at predicting the performance of movies, but now a Carnegie Mellon University study suggests the network could someday be used to glean information about public opinion on all sorts of subjects.
As we note in the lead story of today’s SmartBrief on Social Media, Twitter isn’t without limitations as a polling mechanism, yet data based on tweets seem to track well with traditional polling over the long term. It will be interesting to see how these data are used as the methodology for surveying Twitter becomes more refined.
Would you trust public-opinion figures that were based on tweets? Do you see Twitter becoming a viable alternative to traditional opinion polling?
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