Biz360 Analysis of Social Media Predicts American Idol Finalists.

Danny Gokey Predicted as Next American Idol Cast-Off 

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- For the last two weeks running, Biz360([R]) Inc., the leading provider of media and market intelligence solutions correctly predicted the contestants that would be voted off the American Idol show, Matt Girard and Allison Iraheta. This week, based on it's analysis of social media conversation, the company is predicting Danny Gokey as the next American Idol contestant voted off, leaving Kris Allen and Adam Lambert as the finalists.

At the time of this release, Danny Gokey had generated the lowest amount of social media coverage compared to the other two remaining contestants. Further, he also generated the lowest amount of "positive to neutral" conversation than the others. Based on this information, Biz360 is predicting he will be the next contestant voted off the show.

"Our real-time analysis of the social media conversation agrees with the show's claim that this is one of the closest American Idol races. In fact, for most of this week, Kris had the lowest volume of coverage of the three contestants then he pulled ahead of Danny after last night's performance by a narrow margin," says Tamairah Boleyn, director of marketing at Biz360.

The analysis demonstrates how advanced social media measurement techniques can quickly and efficiently gauge public opinion and provide key insights. Biz360's Community Insights solution was used to examine social media coverage (including blogs, message boards, forums, micro-blogs, online news media and social networks) that mentioned each of the contestants in this week's competition. Biz360 analyzed both the near real-time volume of the coverage as well as the tonality of the conversations (positive, neutral or negative).

"The real message here is not just that social media has become a reflection of public sentiment," says Tony Priore, Biz360's cmo, "but that it is a driving force in shaping public opinion. Social media has leveled the playing field between business and consumers by giving everyone a voice and the potential to reach millions of people with their point-of-view. For the first time in history, the consumer conversation is driving brand perception and not the marketer. The power of social media is significant, and if marketers are listening, they will benefit from a faster and more efficient path towards gaining critical customer insights than ever before."

Biz360 will continue to issue their prediction next week before the finale show, to answer the question: Can social media buzz make American Idol predictions?

About Biz360 Community Insights

In the process of making a purchase decision, consumers follow predictable stages from initial brand exposure to awareness, consideration, and, ultimately, to purchase. To provide intelligence at every stage of the decision process Biz360 offers a family of solutions, including Community Insights, Media Insights, and Opinion Insights.

In the early stages of the decision process, which includes building awareness, consumers typically engage passively with many forms of communications -- while narrowing their choices and forming opinions about products, services and companies. Community Insights provides the information needed to assess the impact of these social media communications. Biz360 Community Insights is an enhanced research and intelligence solution that continuously monitors and analyzes social media conversations and their impact on businesses. This proprietary Web-based solution is built on advanced data aggregation and analytics techniques, including natural language processing (NLP) to provide a wide range of critical and relevant reports, flexible tools, user-defined metrics, and even alerts for managing emerging issues.

About Biz360

Biz360 Inc. removes the inefficiencies of traditional market research by using technology to transform information into actionable insights that help businesses make better decisions. Using advanced data analytics, we aggregate and analyze vast amounts of news and social media data to yield ongoing, relevant metrics which enable our clients to better understand and reach their target audiences, shape market perception, respond to competitive threats, evaluate trends and issues and improve the return on their marketing investments. Biz360's clients include AAA, Aetna, AstraZeneca and CA. Biz360 can be reached at 866.424.9360 or www.biz360.com.