Instagram Predicts Future Of Modeling Popularity

A team of researchers at Indiana University have discovered who will likely be the hot new faces in the world of modeling with over 80 percent accuracy using computational methods and data from Instagram.

"Our analysis suggests that Instagram is as important as being cast by a top agency in terms of its ability to predict success on the runway," said Emilio Ferrara, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California who conducted the research at the IU Bloomington School of Informatics and Computing's Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research and as a member of the IU Network Science Institute, according to CBS News. 

The researchers used both physical and professional information from fashion models and Instagram data that were collected in the fall of 2014.

They analyzed accounts of the models on Instagram, cataloguing each user's number of followers, number of posts per month, number of "likes," whether the comments were positive or negative and the number of "likes" and comments on the posts.

The researchers specifically focused on 15 new faces by identifying who the popular models would be by the Fall/Winter 2015 season. From these faces, researchers predicted the eight most popular on the runways and the seven least popular.

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