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Tech Struggles to Predict American Idol Winner

Geoffrey A. Fowler

The Internet has spoken: The “American Idol” race is too close to call.

The hit reality TV show holds its 2009 season finale on Wednesday night, when either Adam Lambert or Kris Allen will be crowned as winner.

Biz360, a company that measures blog and other social media chatter for companies, has been turning its technology into an “Idol” predictor in recent weeks. Measuring both the volume and tone of coverage, it accurately predicted that Matt Girard, Allison Iraheta and Danny Gokey would be voted off the show, in that order.

But while the Biz360 folks worked through the night trying to read the tech tea leaves, they say that it is just too close to call. As of Wednesday morning, Lambert had an edge over Allen of just 1 percent, they said.

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