The comments are particularly valuable for measuring customer sentiment because they're gut-level and spontaneous.
...To capture the chatter, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a giant in the industry, uses software that collects hundreds of thousands of comments a day. The technology can scan for specific companies, products, brands, people -- anything searchable. It can slice data into a range of categories to quantify the number of times a subject was discussed online, the individuals who mentioned it and the communities where it appeared.
Here's an example:
The company, formed last week by the merger of BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek, also can assess the tone of opinions by analyzing writing style and even individual words used. For example, if a blogger is discussing a new sport-utility vehicle and says he loves it but isn't pleased with how it handles, the software is clever enough to score the posting as an overall positive with a negative on the handling.
Computer companies do the same thing:
Hewlett-Packard, the computer and technology company, lately has picked up from cyberspace that customers really hate leaving their computers at shops for repairs; far better, the company learned, is having technicians repair the machines in homes. "What that makes us do is that when we think about investing more in that area, we say, yes, it's positive to do that," said Rickey Ono, business strategy manager for HP. "We drill into the individual comments and it helps to justify our expenditure on in-home repair."
If corporations are doing it, I bet the Government is too. Bottom line: you never know who's reading what you write.
[hat tip Patriot Daily.]
