shakira
Shakira reacts as her team suffers a fate accurately predicted by Microsoft Bing.

So far, so good for Microsoft’s foray into pop-culture predictions.

By crunching data from social networks and the company’s Bing search engine, Microsoft was able to correctly predict the two contestants eliminated from “The Voice” on Tuesday night.

Sorry, Dani Moz and TJ Wilkins, but the algorithm was right. Maybe that’s what Shakira was pissed about.

Microsoft had originally predicted that Delvin and Dani would be gone, but the prediction shifted to TJ and Dani after the week’s performances.

The company says the predictions are based on the frequency and “sentiment” of Bing searches and social media posts about the contestants. The feature can be accessed by typing “The Voice Predictions” or the name of a contestant into Bing.voicenew

Microsoft will also offer predictions for “Dancing with the Stars” and “American Idol.” The company says it could start making predictions about elections or maybe even sports sometime in the future.

This is part of an ongoing attempt by Bing to differentiate itself from Google. It’s also part of a broader push by Microsoft and many other tech companies to glean new insights — trivial as they may be — from large sets of data.

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