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The rise of blogs and social networks has brought a flood of personal opinion in the form of reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression.
Source: SO01 Public Relations Tactics
Product Code: 6C-100903
Organization/Author/Firm: Anonymous
Format: Newsletter Article (Tactics)
Summary
The rise of blogs and social networks has brought a flood of personal opinion in the form of reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression. And for many businesses, online opinion can make or break a product in the marketplace. As The New York Times reported on Aug. 24, an emerging field known as sentiment analysis is translating the vagaries of those human emotions into hard data.
In San Francisco, a company called Scout Labs recently introduced a subscription service that lets customers monitor blogs, news articles, online forums and social networking sites for trends in opinions about products, services or topics in the news, the Times reported. Another company, Jodange, based in Yonkers, N.Y., offers a service that lets online publishers incorporate opinion data drawn from more than 450,000 sources, including mainstream news sources, blogs and Twitter.
Such tools could help companies understand how specific issues or events affect customer perceptions, helping them respond with appropriate marketing and PR strategies. For casual Web surfers, simpler versions of sentiment-analysis tools like Tweetfeel, Twendz and Twitrratr let them track the views of Twitter users on particular topics. The Times reported that as search engines begin to incorporate more opinion data into their results, the distinction between fact and opinion is blurring.
