Could YouTube Have Predicted Who Won the Election?
Read more about: Social Media
|
Stumble it! |
Delicious | 
Kirtsy | 
Digg
5
Comments
After such an amazing presidential campaign, I think I am going through political withdrawals. I’m still reading all the headlines on CNN, RealClearPolitics, Politico, and several other rather, erm, unnamed partisan blogs. Yesterday I came across a fascinating story on Politico about an analysis of video viewing trends on the major video sites such as YouTube:
Barack Obama may have won the presidential debates during five key moments, each of which was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on video-sharing sites on the Internet in the ensuing days, according to an analysis of viewership figures of every video uploaded to the major video sites — including YouTube, DailyMotion, Veoh, MySpace and MetaCafe.
Although users of video sharing websites likely skew younger and more liberal than voters as a whole, … much can be learned about viewer preferences in general by analyzing which moments video watchers zero in on. It’s a technique that doesn’t just work for politics — … the same method accurately predicted the winner of the last American Idol.
YouTube Consumer Insights
Auditude is the company that was able to pull together the data point and chart the spikes (full report can be viewed here.) While I think this is interesting, valuable, and great for politics, this isn’t just about who wins elections or contests on American Idol. YouTube has a simpler but still powerful built-in Hot Spots tool so that you can see your own highs and lows on any video you upload:
Youtube Viewing Trends
If you are selling anything via video, doing video blogging, tutorials, or just about anything, this tool is priceless. It will tell you when you’re losing viewers. And it will tell you when people are responding to your message. While you might not get as much data to play with as Obama and McCain did, just having this data is reason enough to do more with video. And you can use it to predict what content will be most popular, what trends people are most interested in, and where your content might be confusing viewers.
Sparkplugging Founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping people start & grow a business while maintaining life balance (somehow). 
Ok that is fascinating! Probably makes for a much more accurate public opinion polling of the younger generation. However I’m guessing it would be slanted towards a younger crowd since the older someone gets the less likely they will use these mediums.
Roses last blog post..How to Cook: The Five Senses in the Kitchen
I love those charts. One of these days I really need to try videos, just to see if I like making them or not.
It’s also just amazing how much the internet changed the election this time. I figure we’re still in the early days for that, but more and more it’s going to make a difference in how we vote and how politicians find out what people really think of them.
Stephanies last blog post..Visit the Animal Shelter - Free Fun Friday
That is very interesting. Could YouTube have predicted who won the election though?
The way I look at it, YouTube users is just another one of the demographics. They are just like African Americans, or middle class, or business owners - a demographic. And demographics become bigger and smaller, and the influence of them also vary, and YouTube users as a group is no exception.
Kelvin Kaos last blog post..New Series of Experiments Around Here
I was fascinated to watch how election results correlated with Facebook’s own analytics. I blogged about it, as well, on bMighty.com:
http://www.bmighty.com/blog/main/archives/2008/11/election_08_the.html
Also VERY cool…how much working women’s votes mattered!
http://www.smallbizresource.com/blog/main/archives/2008/11/wednesdays_woma_23.html
No, not so much that they predicted it. just that I’d assume you tube has more democrats and free-thinking republicans on there to help influence that thinking. Not to mention Obama kicked McCain’s ass, so anyone could’ve guessed that one.
Julie@Cool Mom Guides last blog post..Wordless Wednesday (well, maybe a few words…)