The Net-Savvy Executive

Social Media Analysis News, 14 November 2008

2008-11-17T00:17:34Z

News from the companies of social media analysis.

Companies and services

30 October - Hapax launched Amplify, an ad targeting and site screening platform built on the company's natural language processing technology. press release (PDF)
10 November - MediaMiser released version 2.0 of MediaMiser Enterprise. press release
14 November - Leximancer announced LexBox, a customer feedback widget that reports through the Customer Insight Portal.

Events

18 November - Coremetrics is presenting a free AMA webinar, How to Win in a Web 2.0 World with Web Analytics—Keys for Metrics-Driven Success, 18 November at 1:00 PM EST (GMT -5).

Call for papers

Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (PDF), due 30 January. via Drew Conway

links for 2008-11-11

2008-11-12T02:00:43Z

Visalix

Free, web-based tool for data clustering and visualization from Xerox.

(tags: analytics visualization tools)
Eight Levels Of Analytics

Thoughtful post on the different deliverables that travel under the banner of analytics. Not much of a stretch to map it to social media analysis.

(tags: analytics socialmediaanalysis)

links for 2008-11-10

2008-11-11T02:00:26Z

Losing face (A tale of two airlines and their Facebook fiascos)

Negative comments come from employees, too. Good argument for policy, education and monitoring. It can't help to have stressed employees who need an outlet to vent, either.

(tags: casestudy reputation)

links for 2008-11-06

2008-11-07T02:00:37Z

StockTwits.com

Follow stock-related comments and trends on Twitter. Dashbards for individual stocks combine price charts and current tweets (marked by $ticker).

(tags: twitter trading finance)

Social Media Analysis News, 7 November

2008-11-06T22:19:39Z

News from the companies of social media analysis.

Companies and services

31 October - Trackur announced a cobranded version of its dashboard for agency use.
3 November - Blogmeter launched an Italian blog monitoring service, delivering custom reports on posts that mention the company, brand or competitors.
5 November - Synthesio launched Consumer, an analytical dashboard ~~focused on French social media~~ (see comment).
5 November - ethority announced a syndicated report on brand presence in German social media.
5 November - Onalytica announced its first outside investment, £5 million from a group of individuals.
6 November - The Bivings Groups announced EnergyWatch, a new demo of its ImpactWatch media analysis platform. The demo tracks coverage of new energy sources, such as biofuel and wind power.

People

I'm starting to hear about a few layoffs. At the same time, I know that other social media analysis companies are hiring. To help connect both sides of the market, I'm offering an 80% discount on job board listings through the end of the year. Use the discount code 4QSMAV for $10 listings that also appear in the news digest as long as they are active. Post a job.

New research and papers

Metrica released Media Trends, November 2008 (PDF), a summary of historical and current data on media consumption in the UK.
Corporate Insight published Social Media: Trends and Tactics in the Financial Services Industry, which details company initiatives in customer-facing applications. See the executive summary (PDF) and highlights on BobsGuide. via Market Sentinel
Beyond Analysis posted Make Do and Mend, a short paper with strategies for the downturn.
Radian6 released Dell: Free Range Marketing (PDF), which describes Dell's online interactions ahead of a new product launch.
IAB UK released Social Media Handbook (PDF, 9 MB). You'll never guess what it's about.

Events

12–14 November (Las Vegas) - WOMMA Summit and Research Composium. Join us for the SMA vendor meetup on the 12th (updated with details).
13 November (New York) - PRSA-NY Tech Thursday, 6:00 PM at Latitude Bar and Lounge.
18 November - Coremetrics is presenting a free AMA webinar, How to Win in a Web 2.0 World with Web Analytics—Keys for Metrics-Driven Success, 18 November at 1:00 PM EST (GMT -5).

Managing Social Media

2008-10-31T16:38:40Z

If we haven't talked lately, you might not have heard about the theme I've been developing. Last year, I was calling it "the management layer of social media," but I knew that was too geeky. So I refined it to "managing social media." While so much of the talk is about the big ideas and cultural changes surrounding social media adoption, this is all about how to make it work in large organizations. I expect to spend a major piece of the next few years on managing social media.

You can't manage social media!
If this were another post on how companies should listen and participate in social media, I'd be prepared to agree with the standard objection about loss of control. But I'm not talking about control. This is about what companies do internally to manage their social media activities. Just Do It is a great ad campaign, but it's not how things happen in medium or large companies.

Today, I'm sharing the general framework. It doesn't spell anything, but it can be fun to pronounce—especially if you pronounce both Ps...

Organization
Policy
Process
Technology

For the Groundswell fans, this doesn't replace POST—it addresses a separate set of issues that come up inside the company. Issues that we'll get into in the coming months.

Connecting listening to business processes
The first topic is something from the process column, which I've heard as an issue from multiple sources: how to connect social media listening and engagement to business processes. I've encountered at least four different organizational approaches so far, all of which seem to work. I'm lining up the case studies for a report; if you know of a good example of a company that's doing it well, I'd like to know about it. (Yes, I know about Dell. We all know about Dell.)

Social Media Analysis News, 31 October 2008

2008-10-30T20:27:52Z

News from the companies of social media analysis.

Companies and services

24 October - Leximancer announced a partnership with OrbisIP Limited to expand into the international security market, including government and military users.
22 October - Digimind announced the release of Digimind 7.2 "Discovery." The new version includes familiar social media analysis features, positioned for the competitive intelligence market.

New research and papers

The Institute for Public Relations is conducting its fourth annual survey of PR pros on social media and their impact on public relations. Results will be presented at IPRRC in March. via Don Bartholomew
BuzzLogic announced the results of its "Harnessing the Power of Blogs" survey, a sponsored study by JupiterResearch of blog influence and reader behavior.
Networked Insights focuses on broadcast television ratings and engagement in their first "Measuring the Social" report (PDF).
Diane Thieke discusses best practices for reporting PR results in a new ebook from Dow Jones & Company, Talk to Me: 10 Tips for Translating PR Results into the Language of Business.
SAS released Tune into the Voice of Your Customer with Voice Mining. The free paper, written by text mining strategist Manya Mayes, focuses on using SAS Text Miner software to analyze call center transcripts generated by partners. via Seth Grimes
Razorfish released Feed: The Razorfish Consumer Experience Report (PDF). via Shiv Singh

Events

12–14 November (Las Vegas) - WOMMA Summit and Research Composium. Join us for the international SMA meetup on the 12th.
18 November - Coremetrics is presenting a free AMA webinar, How to Win in a Web 2.0 World with Web Analytics—Keys for Metrics-Driven Success, 18 November at 1:00 PM EST (GMT -5).

Current posts on the job board

Senior Director of Partnership and Digital Marketing, GMR Entertainment (New York)

Tags: social media analysis brand monitoring text anayltics

links for 2008-10-28

2008-10-29T02:00:31Z

Selling Social Media “Up” to Management

Great ideas on addressing objections, with more good ideas in the comments.

(tags: socialmedia corporate)

links for 2008-10-24

2008-10-25T02:00:22Z

Tokyo 2.0

Trends in Japan.

(tags: international culture)

Mining the Internet for Investment Insights

2008-10-24T18:09:25Z

A big part of my approach to understanding the market is to explore the edges, and one of the edges is information arbitrage—where social media analysis meets investment research. Think of a portfolio manager or analyst using social media intelligence to analyze investments and find trading signals. It'a pretty easy to understand the ROI in that application, and it's the kind of application that may just get your CFO's attention.

I've talked with people with some interesting approaches to this specialized market, and I recently started a project to categorize the strategies in the market. There are a number of different angles in play, which makes it a particularly interesting space:

In this market, the distinction between social and traditional media isn't always relevant, so news analytics services from Dow Jones and Reuters figure into the mix, too.

Given recent trends in financial markets, I've decided to prioritize other projects, but I expect to come back to this one (so if I missed your company, let me know). It's a potent reminder that there's more to social media than marketing and communications.

Doing My Share to Help the Dollar

2008-10-24T17:00:02Z

At last look, 30% of sales of the Guide to Social Media Analysis are outside the United States (as are half of the companies profiled in the Guide). Making international contacts is one of the more fun parts of tracking social media analysis companies. It's nice to see that a global scope is good for business, too.

Beyond the small thrill I get out of traveling the world virtually, international coverage is just not optional—especially for supporting clients who do business globally. The need shows up in some recent questions:

Client: "Does anyone monitor social media in [langage]?"
Yes. Whatever language you're looking for, someone can handle it for you.
Investor: "Is there a company in France measuring social media?"
Sure. How many do you want?
Vendor: "I'm going to be in [city in a distant country], is there anyone there I should meet?"
Yes. I'll introduce you.

If everything you're hearing elsewhere is US-centric, I can help you with that.

links for 2008-10-23

2008-10-24T02:00:21Z

Today’s lesson: your private conversations ain’t so private

Here's an eye-opening example for the "don't talk business in public" lecture. It gives a whole new level of meaning to "in public." I wonder if any of his competitors will pick up on this?

(tags: security intelligence)

Social Media Analysis News, 24 October 2008

2008-10-24T01:55:05Z

News from the companies of social media analysis.

Companies and services

20 October - Critical Mention announced CriticalWeb, a new service for tracking video and images on the Internet in near-real time.
22 October - Lexalytics introduced Salience 4.0, the first new release since the company's merger with Infonic’s Text Analytics Division. Central to the upgrade are improvements to entity extraction, sentiment scoring and thematic extraction. press release (PDF)
19 October - FirstRain announced a new partnership with FactSet Research Systems that will add FirstRain's web-sourced data into FactSet's Marquee platform. press release

People

Social media researcher Akshay Java defended his dissertation, Mining Social Media Communities and Content, and will join Microsoft Live Labs next month.

Call for papers

The dataset for the ICWSM 2009 Data Challenge is now available. via Akshay Java
Social Computing, Behavior Modeling, and Prediction, due 5 November. via KDnuggets
Semantic Technology Conference, due 24 November.

Current posts on the job board

Senior Director of Partnership and Digital Marketing, GMR Entertainment (New York)

Tags: social media analysis brand monitoring text anayltics

links for 2008-10-22

2008-10-23T02:00:53Z

Mloovi RSS Blog Translator

This could be useful.

(tags: rss translation tools)

Social Media Analysis Meetup at WOMMA

2008-10-22T18:56:23Z

Are you going to the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas next month? I'll be there (sporting a "member" ribbon on my nametag this time). WOMMA is the best event I've found for meeting people from the social media analysis branch of my network, which makes it my best chance to meet you this year. To make it even more interesting, we're going to have a meetup for social media analysis folks who are in town.

This started when Sam Flemming pinged me about organizing a meetup for folks involved in social media analysis internationally. Sam's visiting from Shanghai, and WOMMA draws an international crowd, so it's a reasonable theme. If you happen to meet peers from the same country, that's ok, too.

SMA Vendor Meetup

Where: Spago Las Vegas
Forum Shops at Caesars
(702) 369-6300

When: Wednesday, November 12, 6:30 PM

WOMMA has good receptions that you won't want to miss, so we won't compete with them. If there's no reception on the 12th (research day), we can look at something earlier. If WOMMA has an event, we'll look later. Either way, it's probably dinner.

Update: It looks like there's no WOMMA reception to compete with on the 12th, so we're going at a more East-Coast-friendly 6:30 pm (I'd like to stay awake through dinner). If you're planning to join us, please add your name below so I can update the reservation.

Need a head count
Here's the part where I need your help. I need to know if this is going to turn into a few folks going to a restaurant together (easy) or 50 people looking for a place to talk (harder and $ in advance). Once I get a sense of the numbers, I'll investigate the details, but we're going to do something.

Are you going to be at WOMMA on the evening of the 12th? Will you plan to join us?