The social Web analytics (SWA) field is buzzing, and I’m being contacted by companies in the sector that I didn’t know about when I published The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008 on the 1st July. They’re keen to make the 2009 update, and at this rate that will have to come earlier than later next year. The 2008 eBook has already been downloaded over five thousands of times, which I’m sure is more reflective of the heat in the market than the quality of my prose!
I define SWA as the application of search, indexing, semantic analysis and business intelligence technologies to the task of identifying, tracking, listening to and participating in the distributed conversations about a particular brand, product or issue, with emphasis on quantifying the trend in each conversation’s sentiment and influence. Here’s a quick look at some of the vendors reaching out to me, then rounding off with a bit of gratuitous data visualisation of the blogosphere (you know how I get my kicks).
Techrigy
Techrigy describes itself as enabling “organizations to know what’s being said about their brands, products and people across the social media eco-system. Techrigy’s SM2 solution enables organizations to monitor and analyze conversations, including sentiment, across blogs, social networks, wikis, online video and other user-generated content on the web. Ultimately, Techrigy helps organizations embrace social media, manage risk and identify market trends in real time.”
The founders have interesting credentials. President and CEO Aaron Newman is also CTO of Application Security, the experts in database security, and co-author of “Enterprise 2.0 Implementation” (McGraw-Hill September 2008).
The service features:
Expansive and real-time monitoring: over 100 million blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia are all monitored
Sentiment analysis: SM2 determines sentiment using natural-language processing and Bayesian analysis, and aggregates these to provide a top-level view of social media
Discussion clustering: provides a graphical analysis and classification of all discussions occurring around your products
Customized reporting: display recent discussions, as well as analysis and discussion trends that enable evaluation of marketing or public relations effectiveness… can be scheduled automatically and delivered to anyone
Screenshot:
Techrigy offers a “freemium” service at no cost which you might like to try.
CIC
CIC claims to be “the first Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) research and consulting firm in China”. They have offices in Shanghai, but also Birmingham, AL, interestingly.
CIC describes its framework as L-K-P, namely:
* Listen: listening to netizens’ voices about your brand, product, or service
* Know: understanding the communities and cultures that provide the context for the talk
* Participate: meaningfully interact, inspire and/or contribute to netizens’ world.
So, to the tech. How do they describe the way in which they gather up everything and analyse it? CIC employs a “proprietary natural language text mining technology” but doesn’t reference its basis. Could be entirely proprietary of course. And I can’t really determine much more from the website at the moment, but rest assured I’ll be working with CIC to extract the relevant information for the 2009 eBook update.
Island Data
Island Data takes a different perspective on the source of information to be analysed. Island Data specialises in analysing the communications your stakeholders have with you via emails, comment cards, surveys, blogs, voicemails and call logs. Does this qualify as social media?
This emphasises the dialogue between the organisation and stakeholders rather than between the stakeholders / customers themselves. If they extend out to the comments on their clients’ blogs, and the customer forums they might host, then that gets a bit more social.
Otherwise, Island Data appears to be at the leading edge of the so-called customer relationship management (CRM) field rather than social Web analytics. Equally valid. Highly pertinent, insightful and valuable. But not quite as “social”. I’ll investigate further and get back to you.
Last week I had the opportunity to catch-up with John Markoff, the venerable Times’ technology writer, while he was on a rare trip to the East Coast. In last weeks’ Monday Media Mailbag, I noted that according to Sam Whitmore - Markoff’s following on Twitter has grown from 16 to 505 followers. Therefore it was a good opportunity to get John’s thoughts on Twitter, blogging, new verticals at the Times and his overall thoughts on what is interesting him in the technology space right now.
Imagine competing in a biking event at the Olympics and trying to train for a specific course while living on the other side of the world. While some of your competitors living in or around China have the ability to train on the exact hills and roads that they’ll be racing on, you have no such luxury, putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage.
This is the situation Kristin Armstrong faced, as she was training for the Women’s Road Cycling in Beijing. Looking for some way to simulate the Olympic course, Armstrong turned to Google for her answer
Armstrong and her coach traveled to Beijing to check out the 15-mile race, and decided to bring a GPS unit with them to get an elevation profile of the course. After returning home to the U.S., she was able to export the GPS data to several different formats, and using Google Earth, was able to trace the entire course and find a similar route to train on while at home.
Armstrong says that this technology provided her with an advantage that was invaluable in her preparation for the race, in which she took home the gold medal.
It seems like bikers and marathon runners could really benefit from this type of technology. The ability to see a get a feel for a course before you compete gives some people a major edge. Whether it’s a physical or mental edge can depend on the person, but as technology has advanced, sports have always found useful ways of taking advantage. From watching tape of your opponent before a game, using instant replay to reverse a call, and now simulating a racing course, it seems many athletes are benefitted by our always-developing technology.
So you monitor Twitter feeds, Google feeds, what’s going on Digg and in the blogoshere - all to stay current on what people are saying about your brand and to make sure you kill any fire drills before they become bigger in scope. But how do you turn something that could be really bad into something that could be really good?
Or as Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins says “Live the Chinese cliche of turning danger into opportunity.” Well you have to be creative, and apparently those folks over at EA have their creative juices flowing.
Last August a YouTube user named Levinator25 posted a video online of a glitch in Tiger Woods 2008. The apparent glitch allowed the virtual Tiger to take a shot in the middle of a water hazard as effortlessly as he would on land.
Well those creative folks over at EA monitor YouTube. They apparently heard the chatter around the glitch with serious gamers and it wasn’t lost on them. So nearly a year later as EA made Tiger Woods 2009 demos available online in advance of the game hitting the shelves, they cleverly tied the glitch into their marketing campaign.
In the YouTube video posted on Tuesday and specifically addressed to Levinator25, EA notes:
“Levinator25, you seem to think your Jesus Shot Video was a glitch in the Game. It’s not a Glitch. He’s just that good.”
A few weeks ago the blogswere alive with chatter about a call between Steve Jobs and New York Times columnist Joe Nocera. If you didn’t catch the run-in, I can paraphrase by saying, Nocera picked up the phone and heard this from Mr. Jobs:
“You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.”
At the time, I was trying to track down Nocera for a Q&A session and I didn’t get to include his recollection of the call for my post. I finally tracked down Nocera - back from drinking rosé under a walnut tree - and he kindly agreed to answer my questions on his run-in with Jobs, the media industry and his blog.
RaceTalk: So Joe, I guess I have to ask you first if the call from Steve Jobs caught you completely off-guard?
Joe Nocera: It most certainly did catch me off guard. This is the fifth column I’ve written about Apple since starting my column three and a half years ago, and it is the first time Jobs has called me–and the first words out of his mouth also took me by surprise, to say the least. It’s not every day a CEO of a major corporation calls you a slime bucket!
RaceTalk: Some are blaming you for letting him talk off the record and spin another story - in the form of an ambush call. In my mind it seems to be a flawed PR strategy and one that is going to alienate every reporter they view as neutral or friendly. It also doesn’t read well when played back in a column like yours. As for his opening remark to you, when was the last time the two of you spoke? During your Fortune days? In reading your stories earlier this year and late last year on the iPhone and backdating scandal it doesn’t appear like you chatted?
JN: I don’t know what an “ambush call” really means. Certainly, if he was trying to talk me out of writing the column, it didn’t work. If he was trying to keep me from saying he had another bout with cancer, well, I wasn’t going to say that anyway: my own reporting suggested that that hadn’t happen. I think he was trying to turn a potential adversary into a potential ally–by whispering in my ear, he would somehow be co-opting me, and in-so-doing, turn the argument I was going to make in my column in his favor. But I strongly disagree with his central belief–that he and only he has a right to know about his health. So while I listened respectfully–and made several attempts after the call to get part of it on the record–he didn’t sway my views. I’ve answered some of this already, but to be clear: I never spoke to Jobs either while at Fortune or at the New York Times (until a few weeks ago). At Fortune, I edited several stories about him, but it was always the reporter–and sometimes John Huey–who spoke to him. I did write a story about him in 1986, for Esquire, which is reprinting in my new book, Good Guys and Bad Guys. I spend a week with him as he was starting up NeXT, and he was incredibly accessible, even though he wasn’t selling anything. It was an amazing experience, but one that I’ll never have again–and I doubt any other journalist will either. Jobs now only makes himself available when he has a new product to peddle.
RaceTalk: You recently launched your new blog on the New York Times Website, which you have named “Executive Suite.” Can you talk about what your hope is for the new blog and how it will assist in keeping the dialogue going with your readers?
JN: The blog does several things: it allows me to write shorter pieces in which I can throw out ideas or comments without having to fully develop them as I have to do with the column. It allows me to comment much more than once a week, too, which is nice because there are often points I want to make about something in the news, but have no forum to make them. Now I do. And I think it does wonders for my dialogue with readers. Before the blog, readers had to send email comments to me directly–and I would wind up having 100 conversations a week that were two-way only. Now they can comment on the blog, and readers can interact with each other. It makes for a much better debate and discussion, and I’m enjoying reading all the comments–even the ones that aren’t very nice to me!
RaceTalk: What is your overall thought on the changing media landscape? Do you fear that someday “America’s paper of record” will only be available online?
JN: Someday, some newspaper will go online only, but it won’t be the New York Times–not for a very long time. There is still a lot of loyalty to the paper version of the Times, and it still generates a lot more advertising than the online paper, despite the shrinking ads in all newspapers. What’s really happening here is that there is a melding of the Website and the newspaper, as the Times becomes increasingly “platform agnostic”. The point is to get the best stories in print as quickly as possible–and that matters a lot more than whether they appear online or in the newspaper.
RaceTalk: A few weeks ago I was at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH, with some of your former colleagues, and one of the big general themes was a change in corporate thinking around utilizing customers to shape where the business is going. Michael Dell spoke about what they are doing with Dell’s IdeaStorm and the “My Starbucks Idea” example was tossed around. What’s your thought on corporate willingness to exchange in this new type of discussion and what have you heard from CEO’s on this potential change?
JN: I haven’t really heard much from other CEO’s about this kind of discussion–then again, I haven’t really asked. I’ll start looking into it. Thanks for the blog tip!
Ah, the Internet. I never managed to turn this around for yesterday, so who’s stopping me from putting it out today? Why wait a week? If only the Philadelphia Inquirer understood that.
In the spirit of the Olympics, an event that not only transcends sport but also the very meaning of competition (Bob Costas is rubbing off on me), it seems appropriate to spotlight the media industry competition that has become a pseudo Shakespearean subplot to the Beijing games.
A wiser man passed along this week that Herbert Hoover once said, “Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.”
It’s hard to argue against the fact that competition in the technology and media sectors has changed the way the Beijing Games are being covered; leading to a progressive viewing experience that seems to be sitting well with viewers.
“NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites. In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.”
NBC, obviously concerned that breach could tarnish viewership for its primetime broadcast and alienate advertisers, may have uncovered something about the new media landscape along the way. Early results, including the numbers for the opening ceremony - 34.2 million viewers – indicate that this year’s games are drawing more viewers in the states for an internationally hosted Olympics then ever before. David Carr nicely summed this up in his Media Equation column yesterday:
“You might assume, along with NBC executives, that the jail break of information damaged NBC’s precious choreographed broadcast. You would assume wrongly, by the way. According to Richard Sandomir of The New York Times, the four-hour opening ceremony attracted an average of 34.2 million viewers, the most ever for an opening ceremony not in the United States. I was one of them, in part because as the day wore on, I saw all manner of oohing and ahhing on the Web from bloggers and friends who had peeked in and found themselves awe-struck. By the time the broadcast rolled around, my daughter and I had been nicely primed by the Web fanatics for what was, after all, a kind of epic movie made in real time that was best enjoyed on a big screen with good resolution.”
His insight, underlines another way in which technological competition has transformed the way we watch this Olympics. For me and many others the Beijing games will likely be remembered as the first HD games. For the Torino Olympics NBC produced 50 percent of the events in HD. This year, for the first time, the Olympics are being produced entirely in HD. For borderline Olympic watchers (like me) this makes a huge difference. In Boston, Comcast has dedicated HD Olympic channels that broadcast basketball and soccer 24 hours a day in HD. This weekend, I found myself cultivated by the Brazil vs. New Zealand soccer game in HD and ended up sitting through the Ivory Coast vs. Serbia game after that – only because it was in HD.
Fox Business vs. CNBC: Leave it to Fox Business to create a negative ad campaign around Olympics’ coverage. The somewhat seedy network has bought local airtime to run commercials on CNBC, during their switch-over blocks to Olympic programming, which call out CNBC for dropping its business coverage. Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribunereports that they have bought airtime in local markets including Chicago and New York.
He also reports that commercials go something like this:
“In just a couple of minutes, CNBC is going to drop their business news programming,” the Fox anchor Liz Claman says in commercials that will run on CNBC in Chicago, New York, and other major markets beginning today. “Switch to the Fox Business Network,” she says. “Real business news and no games!”
I have to admit, it’s hard to take your eyes off of Fox Business. Kind of like it’s hard to take your eyes off a train wreck.
Wall Street Journal Vs. Washington Post: Ron Grover, BusinessWeek’s venerable LA Bureau chief became the latest to weigh in on Rupert’s charge to take down the New York Times last week. What got Don to finally address the issue? Here’s what:
“The day after General Motors announced a stunning $15.5 billion quarterly loss, the Journal which Murdoch has controlled for a year, led instead with the more tantalizing story of a federal scientist’s suicide while under investigation in the anthrax case.”
Today’s Journal, interestingly enough, leads with the Georgia and Russia conflict. It also includes a separate page 1 story that analyzes how Vladimir Putin has drawn a line in the sand for the West. Murdoch’s Journal has made political and world news a leading priority in recent months. Even back in late March, Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz detailed how the Journal was making political coverage its business.The percentage of political coverage on the front page of the Journal in the first four months - following Murdoch’s takeover - versus the four months previous to his takeover, jumped from 4.8 to 18 percent.
However, a funny thing has happened along the way as Murdoch continues to set his aim at the New York Times – the subplot with the Washington Post has become more interesting. It’s no secret that Murdoch had a heavy hand in showing Marcus Brauchli the door and now he’s competing as editor-in-chief at the Post in breaking poltical coverage. With Brauchli working closely with Washington Post publisher, and newly anointed media mogul Katharine Graham, it must’ve been a little chilly at this party in Beijing. Here’s hoping they didn’t cross paths.
Flying these days is a huge pain, and there is really no way around it. The airport is filled with long lines, the planes are small and crowded, and you get nickeled and dimed your entire way through the flight.
But, now you may also have to worry about your privacy.
As technology continues to advance, it’s becoming easier and easier for your privacy to be invaded. I’m not talking Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Google searches either. I’m talking about ‘involuntary’ invasions of privacy that will be required in order for you to board your next flight.
The Boston Globe reports that Logan Airport will soon begin using technology that will allow security officials to see through passenger’s clothing to make sure they aren’t hiding liquids or other items that aren’t allowed on flights. Passengers who refuse to go into one of these machines will be subject to a ‘pat-down’ which may or may not be more invasive.
Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, says these full body machines are “The equivalent of walking naked through a room with a bag over your head while somebody peers from the balcony above you,” and says that most passengers would be horrified if they saw the images the machine produced.
While these new security measures seem inevitable, it’s interesting to watch as technology has allowed us to become more connected (iPhone) but has also started to place severe limits on our privacy through social networks and now body-scanners.
What do you think about having this technology at airports?
If social media is on your radar, you’re obviously familiar with Mashable and its founder Pete Cashmore. The blogging network, designed to cover Web 2.0 and launched by Cashmore in 2005, brings in an estimated $166,000 in monthly revenue through sponsorships and advertising. Racepoint Group was in attendance (with more then 400 others) at Mashable’s SummerMash Boston tour stop on Tuesday at the Roxy and had the chance to sit down with Cashmore.
Here is a piece of the interview that my colleague and RaceTalk correspondent Erik Milster had with him:
Although Cashmore wasn’t willing to fully disclose what’s in the pipeline for the rest of this year and moving into next year, it’s clear that the site will continue to be a must read for those involved in Web 2.0 and social media. According to Compete.com, in July the site nearly hit 1 million unique visitors - falling just short - with 977,328.
Google not only lets you search for content, but now they will help you create and publish it (minor note: they will make money off your content). Yesterday, Google rolled out Knol – a site they’ve been testing for about seven months that allows “experts” to contribute articles under a Creative Commons license.
Although many are calling Knol the Wikipedia Killer, there are some fundamental differences between the sites. 1 – Wikipedia functions through “Wisdom of the Crowds” while Knol relies on one “expert” to write on a topic. 2 – Changes made to a Knol article must first be approved by the author, making the usability similar to About.com. 3 – Knol pages will make money through Google AdSense, a program Wikipedia does not use.
Controversy has quickly arisen around whether or not content on Knol will get pushed to the forefront to promote the interests of its parent company. For the time being, Wikipedia is still the leader in content, with over 2.5 million articles submitted to the English version alone – all of which typically appear in the top Web search results on Google – but it will remain to be seen if Knol will take the lead.
The New York Times spoke to a Google spokesperson and reports: “We will treat Knol pages as we treat other Web pages,” said Cedric Dupont, a Google product manager. “If there is a Knol that is the first place in search results, it deserves that place.”
Is Google gaining too much power, dipping its toes in both the content creation and delivery pools? Are they just upset Wikipedia didn’t buy into AdSense? If we all trust one “expert’s” article on Google, aren’t we closing ourselves off to the power of collective intelligence? Would love to hear your thoughts.
In the meantime, you can learn more about Knol here on Wikipedia.com. (Irony at it’s finest)
Nicholas Negroponte took the stage with David Kirkpatrick at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH to address the crowd on where the One Laptop per Child project currently stands earlier this morning. Some excerpts below:
DK: Happy to have you on stage, along with your XO.
You have transformed a new way to get technology into the hands of kids across the world. However, you’ve often talked about goals that haven’t been achieved. How do you describe the state of OLPC?
NN: You need a certain amount of hype. Some of it was that. We had to change our targets as we began to see which countries really were going to put a full effort behind one laptop for every child in their country. Peru is going to do a million this year. If I was running a company that would be pretty good to go from $0-$200 million (if they were paying for each computer) in one market - in one year.
DK: Do you sometimes wish that you had made it a business and not a non-profit philanthropy effort?
NN:Never. What the non-profit does is create the mission for us. We don’t look at the developing world as a market, we look at it as a mission. When I go to each head of state they know that I am talking with them about a mission to transform education in their countries and not giving them a sales’ speech. It also allows us to attract the top talent that want to be part of a true mission, without even thinking about earning a salary.
DK: So the XO that you have with you does something different then the XO’s in the developing world right now?
NN:Yes, this is a dual-boot XO that runs both Windows and Linux (Negroponte boots in Windows for the crowd).
NN: We will kick-off a global “Give One, Get One” program within the next few months.
Disclosure: One Laptop per Child is a client of the Racepoint Group.
