- Prediction from Twitter posts of (among other things) UK elections.
- New uses for social networks; if successful, likely to have some impact on political organizing.
"Micro-blogging service Twitter can be used to predict the future box-office takings of blockbuster films, according to researchers at Hewlett Packard (HP).
....
They found the rate at which messages were produced could be used to accurately predict the box office takings before the film opened.
"Further analysis of the content of the messages could predict ongoing success."
If you've read this before: the BBC story has a link to the paper on arxiv. (I haven't figured out how to link to that; the link "helpfully" does nothing but download.)
"Micro-blogging service Twitter can be used to predict the future box-office takings of blockbuster films, according to researchers at Hewlett Packard (HP).
....
They found the rate at which messages were produced could be used to accurately predict the box office takings before the film opened.
"Further analysis of the content of the messages could predict ongoing success."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
And: "[Twitter analysis] is being used by an organisation called Tweetminster to monitor the UK general election to work out whether online buzz correlates with the winners."
http://tweetminster.co.uk/
Can Social Networks help the progress of Astrophysics and Cosmology? An experiment in the field of Galaxy Kinematics
This paper is crucial part of an experiment aimed to investigate whether Social Networks can be of help for Astrophysics....In this paper, we solicit the interested Astrophysicist/Cosmologist FB users to join this group....This test case may anticipate the future in which Web n.0 will become an effective scientific tool for Astrophysics.
arXiv:1004.1190 [pdf]