Twitter Can Predict the Stock Market?

Hello and happy Halloween!

So, I was on my friend Brian's website TruTricks, which is filled with all sorts of little tidbits of information and nifty things to make life generally more awesome and I stumbled upon this little bit of information:

Wired recently released that Twitter can be used to predict the stock market. I found that rather neat!

Basically, what they found is pretty straight forward. That Twitter, being a website that functions as millions of little mini-blogs can give an acturate reading of people's mood.  Although this is by no means an exact science, it makes sense that Twitter and the "blogosphere" in general (I'm not sure how I feel about that word, but we'll use it) can give a thermomoter read on how hot or cold people's general temperment may be.

Now, the interesting thing is that they found that Twitter can accuratly predict the Dow Jones Industrial Average at a REDICULOUS 86.7 percent.  Now, if one could reliably come up with a way to read Twitter, Facebook, and the "blogosphere" their reading would be much larger if the Law of Large Numbers can be used.

Next post, I'll mention how one might be able to use a similar technique, and new software from Microsoft that would help track and map individual ideas and concepts on the Internet.  This could be used for a lot of applications, but I'll frame it in the idea of investing and a few others to get the point across.

Now go get some candy.