Navin Mani 4. April 2012

(English) How we predicted the future with Facebook

At the start of the UEFA Champions League season, we published a ranking of Facebook pages of all 32 clubs. The competition of the best football teams in Europe is coming to an end. The grand final! Only eight teams are left.

If you take a close look at our ranking you will find a remarkable parallel. 7 teams of our top 10 Facebook-table are now in the quarterfinal round.

overview image english

FC Barcelona (1)
Real Madrid (2)
Chelsea London(5)
AC Milan (6)
FC Bayern (7)
Olympique Marseille (8)
Benfica Lissabon (10)

()=position in our ranking

Exceptions prove the rule

Apoel Nicosia is the surprising team amongst the top 8 because no one had them on their list, not just in a sportive way. Even in our Facebook ranking, they achieved only the 32nd and hence the last place. Why? They have no official Facebook page. However the largest unofficial site improved tremendously. At least according to the numbers of fans, it increased from 98 to about 16,000.
The parallels are very clear with this one exception. And we can only say: "We were right." Or rather, Facebook and the fans were right. Previously you had to rely on experts, or on the crystal ball, but would you put money on that? We now found a way to predict the real important things in life, like the forecast of the teams in the Champions League quarter finals. And the best thing is, that everyone can use it easily. This method is really unsurpassable with hit rates of over 70% ;-) "crowd-sourced-prediction" is the new buzzword. Due to the high number of facebook users, which enable and support this method in a unconscious way, it is crowdsourcing.

Will FC Barcelona win the Champions League?

We won’t say that FC Barcelona wins the title in any case, just because of the forecast in the Facebook ranking. As you can see in the overview there are two "fallen stars" (Man Utd and Arsenal). They aren’t in the quarterfinals in spite of their high values of their facebook page. So you have to except surprises. And also non-techies know: whoever makes it to the final, has a chance to win the cup.
However, we dare to give a forecast. According to our Facebook ranking FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Bayern Munich will reach the next round. That sounds at least reasonable.
Now we at divia ask ourselfs: are the teams on the pitch so good because they have the best Facebook pages, and millions of fans to support them online? Or are the Facebook pages of the clubs so successful, because the teams are amongst the best in Europe? What do you think?

 

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Navin Mani

Managing Partner
Navin Mani verantwortet seit 2009 als Managing Partner den Geschäftsbereich Consulting und ist Head of Sales der divia GmbH. Er ist bereits seit 2003 als leidenschaftlicher Unternehmer und selbständiger Berater aktiv und gründete seit dieser Zeit mehrere Unternehmen. Sein Studium absolvierte der Diplom-Ökonom an der Universität Hohenheim. Seine Schwerpunkte sind: Marketing-Strategie, Inbound-Marketing, Marketing-Automatisierung, Market Intelligence und KI. Als Projektmanager und gefragter Workshopleiter gibt er sein Wissen über Marketing-Strategie und Leadgenerierung weiter.