So the whole world waited with baited breath yesterday to get that text message from Obama about who his VP was. And the concept was great I thought, because of the way that social media has changed the news cycle. You see more and more news being broken via social media and it's then mainstream media who is making the commentary. Well Obama wanted to provide his supporters with that same kind of power, break it to the few first, before any official press release or any press conference or before any mainstream news source scooped it. Well after he didn't get me the text message yesterday, I kind of stopped caring. And that's the problem, because it had such a build up - because he had everyone anticipating the announcement yesterday when he couldn't deliver it was a huge let down to many. Now not to say this cost him voters or anything like that, I am just saying it's one of the problems with politicans trying to leverage social media & other technological innovations to reach their supporters. A decision like picking your VP is a very important one and takes lots of time and thought. But us social media types aren't very patient, if we don't get the information when we want it or when we thought that we were going to have it, we quickly move on. I think Obama has executed a brilliant social media and internet campaign, probably the best ever; but this time he let us down. Not to mention as Andrew Shotland pointed out this morning Google already knew

So this post begins a series of posts that will examine Googles algorithm and how it relates to predicting outcomes. To test if one link one vote actually holds true. Local SEO Guide got me started on this with his great examination of the 2008 Iowa Caucus results in relation to each of the Candidates incoming links.  In these posts I will be examining the major categories of the 2008 Hollywood Foreign Press Associations Golden Globes and using the logic set forth by the Google Algorithm try and predict the winners. The Golden Globes will televised on NBC on January 13th 2008, so these posts will wrap up by atleast January 12th or sooner if time permits. I will be analyzing the movies official site URL as well as the iMDB link as many people in the industry or in the Hollywood blogosphere will link straight to the iMDB page instead of the official site. So those two URLs I will evaluate each in Yahoo! Site Explorer, Google's link: command and the number of links in Technorati each has and they will be tabulated together for each film to determine who the winner should be.

Best Motion Picture - Drama

American Gangster
Imagine Entertainment/Scott Free Productions; Universal Pictures

• Yahoo! Site Explorer Totals: 57,457
• Google Totals: 1,122
• Technorati: 2,037

 

Atonement
Working Title Films Limited; Focus Features

• Yahoo! Site Explorer Totals: 31,381
• Google Totals: 621
• Technorati: 1,253

 

Eastern Promises
Kudos Pictures/Serendipity Point Films; Focus Features

• Yahoo! Site Explorer Totals: 21,795
• Google Totals: 296
• Technorati: 1,492

 

The Great Debaters
Harpo Films; The Weinstein Company/MGM

• Yahoo! Site Explorer Totals: 15,542
• Google Totals: 0
• Technorati: 451

 

Michael Clayton
Samuels Media and Castle Rock Entertainment a Mirage Enterprises/Section 8 Production; Warner Bros. Pictures

• Yahoo! Site Explorer Totals: 33,534
• Google Totals: 1,326
• Technorati: 1,017

 

No Country For Old Men
A Scott Rudin/Mike Zoss Production; Miramax Films/Paramount Vantage

• Yahoo! Site Explorer Totals: 29,665
• Google Totals: 406
• Technorati: 1785

 

There Will Be Blood
A Joanne Sellar/Ghoulardi Film Company Production; Paramount Vantage/Miramax Films

• Yahoo! Site Explorer Totals: 11,635
• Google Totals: 198
• Technorati: 902

 

After looking over the results hands down American Gangster is receiving more buzz than all the other films. It has more links in Google, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Technorati, in fact it more than doubles most of the other films. One thing we must look in this though is that in late 2007 the American Gangster DVD Screener was leaked on to the internet and of course there was a buzz about that on new sites and industry blogs. If I was googlebot I would be spidering all these links and categorizing them so I would know better a true estimate of how many links were an editorial comment about the movie itself and not another news item related to the movie. No Country For Old Men did nearly as well as American Gangster on Technorati so it got nearly as much blog buzz but less over all links. Is it safe to say American Gangster walks away with the prize? I don't know but I am going to have to because I am too lazy to shift through all those links and determine what's what. I have watched both of these films and both were phenomenal, American Gangster probably has more mass appeal than No Country For Old Men and sometimes the Golden Globes will showcase the more out there picture as best picture as opposed to the Academy Awards. So this is a tough call; but as I said this is going to be based on the principle of one link = one vote.  So I declare the 2008 Golden Globe Best Picture - Drama Winner as American Gangster. Remember to check back to see the analysis of the other categories and on January 14th to see how Google's algorithm actually did.