An interesting take on American Idol voting

Good post on GigaOm this week on the mechanics of American Idol voting, prescient given the surprising upset of Kris Allen over Adam Lambert.

Net net, this isn’t really a vote. It’s more like an opportunity to register preference, if that preference gets through the system. The system is bound by input, as you can imagine the phone lines and SMS servers have finite capacity. For example, let’s say the capacity of the system is, say, 1 million “votes.” Person A has 10 million voting fans and Person B has 1 million voting fans. If the system can;t handle more than a million votes, then Person A and Person B will be pretty much tied in their “votes.” This is likely why the Idol votes are always close, and for me, explain the Lambert goof.

Full article here.