Thanks to the availability of large online data sets, it has become possible to quantify success in different fields of human endeavour. The study presented here contributes to this literature in evaluating the effect of social media activity, as a means of 'self-branding', to increase the chances of models being elected for the Playboy Magazine's Playmate of the Year award. We hypothesise that candidates who actively manage their Instagram accounts can increase their likelihood to win the award: they use social media to gain more followers, who then might vote for them in the award polls. The findings indicate that social media activity actually has predictive capacity to estimate the outcome of the award. We find evidence that candidates who manage their social media accounts more actively than other candidates have a higher probability to become Playmate of the Year. The findings underline the benefits of social media

中文翻译：

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社交媒体自有品牌与成功：来自模型竞赛的定量证据

由于大型在线数据集的可用性，量化人类努力的不同领域的成功成为可能。此处介绍的研究有助于评估社交媒体活动的影响，作为“自我品牌化”的一种手段，以增加模特被选为《花花公子》杂志年度最佳玩伴奖的机会。我们假设积极管理 Instagram 帐户的候选人可以增加他们赢得奖项的可能性：他们使用社交媒体获得更多粉丝，然后他们可能会在投票中投票给他们。调查结果表明，社交媒体活动实际上具有估计奖项结果的预测能力。我们发现有证据表明，比其他候选人更积极地管理社交媒体账户的候选人更有可能成为年度最佳玩伴。调查结果强调了社交媒体的好处