A recent post from the TweetReach blog posed this question: Did Twitter predict Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate?

TweetReach analyzes Twitter to tell you who is talking about a subject, “how many people saw it, and who those people are.” In conjunction with the upcoming election, the TweetReach crew set up a dashboard to track potential GOP running-mate selections. It turns out that the dashboard results put Ryan at the top of the twitter heap - before the announcement was made.

The TweetReach crew wondered if Twitter predicted the Vice Presidential pick.

I figure it’s the other way around. It’s probably the case that Romney’s team was tracking metrics that included this info or echoed the same trends. The nature of Twitter is showing you what people are currently thinking. While analyzing Twitter is a great way to see trending topics, I don’t think that it can predict the future.