It had to happen sooner or later – Twitter is being analysed to see if Katie Price is in or out

katieprice[UK] The fashion industry prides itself on being able to predict what will be hot next season. Get it right and there’s serious money to be made. Get it wrong and warehouses and clearance stores are left with stock that nobody wants.

Up until now, however, making that call hasn’t been an exact science but thanks to Twitter that could be about to change. Or so says London-based Stylesignal, whose newly launched software-as-a-service (SaaS) product Trend Science claims to be “the world’s most accurate forecasting service”, and it’s, in part, powered by Twitter.

Stylesignal says that Trend Science resulted from a two year research project to give the fashion industry a deeper insight into “consumer sentiment” by automatically analysing opinions about trends garnered from various social media, such as Twitter. The resulting data is then presented as an easy to read chart or top 20 list. Trends can be broken down by territory, for example, or garment types, prints, patterns, colours and details, along with the ability to measure the popularity of more general trends over time.