Informatics professor’s Twitter research leads to licensing agreement, encourages school to examine other commercial possibilities

Last October, IU School of Informatics professor Johan Bollen made national headlines after publishing his paper, “Twitter mood predicts the stock market.”

Bollen said when looking at mood data pulled from millions of tweets, he could predict the changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average three to four days later with 87.6 percent accuracy.

Now, the IU Research & Technology Corporation has executed an exclusive licensing agreement with Guidewave Consulting, a new start-up consulting company created by Bollen based on his research.

Guidewave has signed a consulting agreement with the social-media based hedge fund, Derwent Capital Markets of London, the first of its kind in Europe.
Derwent Capital Markets first expressed interest in the research in March, offering the University $40 million.

At the time, Bollen and his co-researcher, School of Informatics post-doctoral student Huina Mao, stood to gain 35 percent of that investment.

“The neat thing about this technology is that it lends itself to a number of different areas and opportunities and industries that can take advantage of it,” said Tony Armstrong, president and chief executive officer of the IURTC in a press release.

Armstrong said he hopes the agreement will lead to more chances for faculty in the School of Informatics to turn their research into commercial opportunities.

In the release, School of Informatics Dean Bobby Schnabel said the agreement is a good indicator the University as a whole is working towards finding commercial uses for the school’s informatics research.

“I’ve been impressed that IURTC has worked constructively with Johan to come up with a model that worked well for his case,” Schnabel said. “Encouraging entrepreneurship is a priority for our school and is something that we want to help our faculty to do.”

— Jake New