Most of the effective algorithms for measuring sentiment rely on fairly well formatted, “predictable” text that follows formal grammar rules. But formal writing carries a bias. It is an immensely more difficult task to harvest information from the drips-and-drabs of informal writing such as is found in twitter and forums (or even blogs).

Reactions to the 2010 Super Bowl ads were reported early and often: The tally of mad, mid-game tweets let us know what the digital mavens were thinking. But what about the rest of the country? The folks who prefer to enjoy their social media on work computers in the days after?

The nimble behemoth lumbers forward. It is only a matter of time before Google owns the brand-monitoring space. Radian6, Scout Labs, Techrigy, are probably looking over their shoulders as they compete for business among the PR firms scrambling to keep tabs on the social web.
Google introduced Alerts in 2004 and became the first true technology solution [...]

In the social-media analytics space, there is much discussion about  accuracy. Unfortunately, it is rarely defined and there is never a discussion about what is accurate enough.  Of course we want accuracy in everything we do.  Just saying we need accuracy is like saying we need cheap energy.
Obviously cheap energy is highly desirable and there are [...]

Brand monitoring and social-media analytics are almost invariably lumped together, even by savvy marketing  folk. But there really should be no confusion between monitoring tools that simply catalog anytime and anywhere a term is mentioned and analytics solutions that give you a holistic view and true understanding of your customers. This isn’t to suggest that monitoring isn’t [...]

I credit Malcolm Bastien for inspiring the headline who says in a recent blog post: “Just like the enemy of web analytics is measurement of page views and visitors, the enemy of social media listening is listening only for brand mentions.”
Such a great point. Counting brand mentions is only the tip of the iceberg yet [...]