Swarm Creativity Blog

This weekend the Iranians are electing a new president. Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad competes against reformist candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaee. It seems that Ahmadinejad's fiery rethoric did little to help him improve his chances to win the elections, at least on the Web. Coolhunting with Condor today for the frontrunner on the Web and the Blogs, once on the entire Web, and once restricted to the "ir" Iranian domain brought a clear picture: not once was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad leading. First the global analysis, searching the entire blogosphere and then the entire Web. It seems as if Mehdi Karroubi would be emerging as the clear leader, at least on the global (uncensored) Internet! Now restricted only to blogs within the Iranian domain: And finally all Web sites within the "ir" Iranian domain: Inside Iran, the three reform candidates are tied with Mir-Hossein Mousavi slightly ahead on blogs, and Mohsen Rezaee the clear leader on th...

Recently I was asked if I could predict the outcome of the Iranian Presidential elections on June 12, 2009, based on what people are saying on Blogs and the Web about the candidates. Unfortunately this is a much harder task than predicting the US Presidential elections, or the Zurich Mayoral elections, as our system is not set up to parse and rank Farsi Web sites. Nevertheless, I was curious what I would find out. I took the leading candidates from the Wikipedia page . They are Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current incumbent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who is running as an independent, and Mehdi Karroubi. There is a whole list of other potential candidates listed on Wikipedia, which I ignored for my tests. I included Mohammad Khatami, former President of Iran, who has endorsed Mousavi. Below is the Condor/CoolTrend picture of what the English Web said for the last four days: Mehdi Karoubi leads the Web Buzz in the US/English Web. In the US/English Blogosphere, the picture is different: Current in...