Twitter Unveils 'Oscars Index' To Track Awards Buzz By User Sentiment

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On Tuesday, Twitter introduced a website that will track what people are tweeting about this year's Oscar nominees — and could forever change how we predict award show winners.

Twitter Oscars Index is a line graph in which you can check out how popular nominated films, actors, and directors are based on the positive feedback they receive in tweets.

The Index rates positive tweets on a scale from 0-100. Twitter detailed how this works on its blog: " For example, if a nominee has an Index of 80, comments about that nominee are more positive than roughly 80 percent of all the other terms on Twitter."

The unique system gives a daily tweet analysis on all big Oscar categories from Best Picture to Best Director.

Here's a look at Best Picture:

Users can track a film, director, or actor's popularity on Twitter from Dec. 16 until the current date to see how favorites pair up against each other and see Twitter's predictions for the Oscar race.

For example, both "Argo" and "Django Unchained" have seen major improvements in score since Christmas, while "Amour" has stayed rather neutral (other than a spike on Jan. 10, probably due to its Oscar nominations). "Zero Dark Thirty" is far below every other nominee with a score of six (it has ranged anywhere from three to seven and a half).

Who does Twitter pick to win the big categories?

Best Picture: "Silver Linings Playbook."
Best Actor: Hugh Jackman just beats out Daniel Day-Lewis today. Both have been received tremendously on Twitter.
Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence has been leading the pack since day one; however, Jessica Chastain has also been gaining traction.
Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz.
Supporting Actress: Sally Field pulls ahead of Anne Hathaway.
Best Director: Ang Lee, hands down.

The move comes after Twitter saw over four million tweets about the Golden Globes on Sunday, kicking off awards season — which also includes the Critic's Choice, Screen Actor's Guild, Director's Guild, Writer's Guild, Producer's Guild, British Academy of Film and TV, and Academy Awards.

For the first time in history, the index "reflects the ebb and flow" of award season chatter, "showing how positively fans on Twitter are discussing nominees relative to each other," Fred Graver , Twitter's head of TV, wrote on the microblogging service's official blog .

Twitter first rolled out a similar product last year during the 2012 election to track how Twitter users felt about social and economic issues and, most importantly, about candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

The Oscar Index was produced in partnership with social-analytics provider Topsy, the same company that created Twitter's Political Index during November's election.

We'll see on February 24 if the Academy feels the same way as the fans.

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