“… social media analysis project that examined whether real-time analysis of social media conversations could predict the outcome of popular shows…”

The Power of Social Media Data in Business

Article | 06.22.10 | By Stefan Andreasen

http://bit.ly/a8Qcs2

With just about every major brand and celebrity on Facebook and Twitter, the line between social media and popular culture is becoming harder to distinguish by the day. What is evident is the incredible power social media has in uncovering popular sentiment and the way information is being shared and disseminated. The sheer amount of data amassed on any social network on any given day holds an incredible amount of intelligence and insight into where the collective sentiment of the masses lies.

The numbers speak for themselves: Twitter grew 1,444 percent last year with more than 50 million tweets sent each day, and Facebook now has over 400 million active users. Every minute, 600 new blog posts are published, 34,000 tweets are sent, and 240,000 pieces of content are shared on Facebook.

The question now is how businesses can benefit from all this data and what, if any, tangible intelligence can be extracted from it.

In fact, the aggregation of data from social media networks and forums can become an incredibly powerful tool for gathering real-time intelligence and making more informed and strategic business decisions. Companies can also analyze the data to better understand customer sentiment and satisfaction, market trends and competitive threats, to name just a few. From a cultural standpoint, the data can also provide insight into the collective opinions of the masses on a number of relevant issues, including political elections, social crises (like the BP oil spill) and yes, even reality television shows.

Case in point: At Kapow Technologies we created Reality Buzz, a social media analysis project that examined whether real-time analysis of social media conversations could predict the outcome of popular shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. Reality Buzz semantically extracted tens of thousands of tweets, comments and discussions about contestants on both programs each week and applied sentiment analysis to the data. In the end, we were able to draw some clear, data-driven conclusions to predict the contestants who would be eliminated each week.

Continues here…

http://www.semanticuniverse.com/articles-power-social-media-data-business.html

- Stefan Andreasen
http://kapowtech.com/