Data Central

Previous HP Labs studies have shown that it is possible to predict the ebb and flow of Twitter “trending topics” by extrapolating from early observations.

In new research, the Labs team takes this predictive capability one step further by inventing a technique to forecast popularity on Twitter for a news article before it is published – with up to 84% accuracy.

The analysis, “The Pulse of News in Social Media: Forecasting Popularity,” by Sitaram Asur, Roja Bandari, and Bernardo Huberman, draws on data from over 40,000 news articles published over nine days in August 2011.

HP Labs’ study reinforces the intuition that the source of news matters most in determining how many tweets will link to a given article.  But as social media continues to increase in importance, key questions remain about how users are influenced to act – beyond clicking the “retweet” button – and the nature of journalism in 140 characters.

How the system works

The researchers hypothesized that four factors would determine an article’s popularity:

- The news source that creates and publishes the article

- The category of news the article belongs to (e.g. business, health, or sports)

- Whether the language in the article was emotional or objective

- Whether celebrities, famous brands, or other notable institutions are mentioned

The team then used publicly-available tools to assign each news article a score for all four factors.  For example, the Stanford Named Entity Recognizer was used to identify text representing a person or company name, and the historical prominence of the person or company on Twitter determined the score.

Finally, a prediction for the number of tweets the article would receive was calculated using standard statistical models.

(For a detailed look into the methodology, read the full paper)

Results, limitations, and future research

The model can predict how often an article will be tweeted with surprising accuracy.  And in many ways, it confirms common editorial wisdom: stories that mention celebrities, come from credible sources, and belong to popular categories of news (e.g. technology) are more likely to generate tweets. The difference, of course, is that HP’s software automates this process with a level of accuracy the researchers did not expect.

Interestingly, whether or not the language in the article was emotional or objective had a very minor influence on its distribution on Twitter, suggesting that “link bait” headlines and hysterical adjectives don’t propagate messages any further than straightforward reporting.

“The tool we’ve created is not just useful to news organizations that want to increase their stories’ distribution on Twitter,” says Bernardo Huberman, an HP Senior Fellow and co-author of the study.  “For example, activists and politicians are increasingly using social media to influence public opinion.  By testing their messages using our algorithm, they may be able to improve the visibility of their cause.”

Huberman goes on to say that, in principle, a reporter could swap out her editor for algorithmic analysis, but that would lead to a singular focus on generating tweets at the expense of other priorities.  “Social media is an important and growing influence on the public agenda, but it is not the only driver,” he allowed.

Indeed, previous research from HP Labs has shown that even on Twitter, influence and popularity is not the same thing.  Expect the brilliant minds at HP Labs to build on this research in the future by integrating their influence algorithm to more accurately measure the economics of attention.

(Contributed by Martina Van Trucco, HP Labs)

This year’s HP Labs Annual Report is now available, giving a unique look into the state-of-the-art in a wide variety of technologies.

The breadth and depth of innovation coming out of HP Labs worldwide R&D centers is nothing short of astonishing.  A few of the 138 Labs innovations appearing in HP products last year were:

• low-power servers for web-scale data centers (Project Moonshot)
• a file systems for massive databases
• Photonics that replace copper wire light
• the Vayu Internet-on-your-TV device

Our demonstrator program, which takes selected research and creates real-life product demos, and customer co-innovation programs continue to generate great results. We have featured each of our 2011 demonstrator projects, including work on secure device architectures for personal computing, enterprise collaboration tools, seamless and secure document workflows, and predictive analytics applications in the oil & gas and healthcare industries.

This year we have also included a series of spotlights on specific topics for which many of our researchers have real passion: healthcare, sustainability, global and social impact, and thought leadership.

Finally, we are pleased to share a companion report, which features the 658 technical papers published by our researchers in a separate HP Labs 2011 Publications report. If you come across a publication that interests you while browsing it, remember you can access all of HP Labs’ external Tech Reports on our site.

We’ve reached the halfway point at the World Economic Forum and are celebrating the great work that our employees do, not only here in Davos this week, but also throughout the year.

As we’ve previously discussed, HP’s commitment to the World Economic Forum goes well-beyond attending the Annual Meeting in Switzerland. We have employees around the globe and in numerous different divisions who work with WEF to create meaningful thought-leadership, contributing their expertise and knowledge skills to augment issues about which WEF advocates.

Today, during a private review session for delegates attending WEF, the NEA (New Energy Architecture) report was released for discussion. The NEA was developed with key insights from HP’s Juergen Arnold, Chief Technology Officer, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking. The report is designed to help build a methodology to assist decision-makers make the transition to energy efficiency and Arnold’s work examines the role that ICT (information, communication and technology) plays as being a key enabler for transformation of energy systems. 

After collecting feedback from today’s review at WEF, the report will incorporate the changes before releasing to the public.

Creating sustainable solutions that are helping to meet the world’s growing need for new and efficient ways of living and working has long been a priority for HP. Our customers are cutting their technology energy consumption and costs by more than half with energy efficient products. In fact, our products are on average 50% more energy efficient today than they were in 2005.

Now that’s transformation. 

(above: Davos, Switzerland.  credit: WEF)

Greetings from Davos, Switzerland and the first day of the 42nd World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting!

Long considered one of the leading global gatherings of business, political, religious and intellectual leaders, WEF is one of the best settings for HP to engage top customers, government leaders and key influencers. A delegation of HP executives, led by Executive Chairman Ray Lane, will spend the next few days developing customer and partner relationships, participating on WEF panel discussions and sharing their viewpoints on this year’s theme, The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models.

HP executives will discuss technology’s role in transforming society, from lowering the barrier of entry for entrepreneurs in high-growth markets to advancing human progress through meaningful technology.

HP executives onsite in Davos include:

• Ray Lane, Executive Chairman
• Jan Zadak, executive vice president, Global Sales 
• Yves de Talhouet, managing director, HP EMEA
• Eric Cador, senior vice president, PSG EMEA
• Gregg Melinson, vice president, Government Relations

Developing Shared Value Strategies

Earlier today, Yves de Talhouet participated in a session entitled “Developing Shared Value Strategies.” Organized by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, the session explored how companies can better utilize their corporate assets to generation benefits for the company and for society.

This session was particularly important to HP as the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship was one of the first formal partnerships forged by HP’s Global Social Innovation team in 2009. Collaboration with organizations such as the foundation and its community of 200 social entrepreneurs has been a fundamental component of HP’s vision and implementation of creating shared value.

Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, the architect of the creating shared value model, participated in the session as well and heard the progress that HP and others have made.

HP and the World Economic Forum:

HP has been a member of the WEF community since 1980. In 2003, the company was named a Strategic Partner, joining a select group of 100 companies handpicked for their alignment with WEF’s commitment to improving the state of the world.

In addition to the Annual Meeting in Davos, throughout the year WEF hosts regional summits and councils around the globe, convening key decision-makers from government, industry, civil society and academia to address regional challenges and align stakeholders. Across the company, HP employees work with WEF on global and regional projects throughout the year, helping to set the intellectual agenda of WEF’s programming and publications. For example, HP Fellow Steve Simske is a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade.

For more information about the World Economic Forum, click here.