I found Devin Spence’s analysis on how twitter can actually be used to predict market trends incredibly interesting.
I’ve been an avid internet user ever since I was in 5th grade and so I’ve been able to see the rise in social media first hand. I’ve found websites that let the public express their personalities on the world wide web very iffy to take part in, but now it’s evident that researchers, such as Johan Bollen, have actually found a way to correlate emotions expressed online with market trends. All of a sudden just tweeting or posting on Facebook allows analysts to predict behaviors of stocks and translates your typing into cash.
I personally agree with Devin’s thoughts regarding that there will be a huge increase in attention towards emotions expressed on Twitter, but I also believe that this exemplifies just how much economies have advanced in the past few years. If between the time that I was in 5th grade and first year university researchers are now able to predict market trends with social media websites, then I can’t wait to see what happens in the next 7 years!
