Networked Insights plans to
announce this week several features in its SocialSense platform that should give marketers more insight into chatter across social media channels. The benefits range from tighter integration with
Twitter and Quantcast to date-range analysis, and trending based on insights and keyword tag clouds.
Rather than having the ability to simply recognize signals from noise across social
media, Networked Insights wants to assure that clients can identify the conversations and what each means. The company does this through its analytics platform SocialSense. The platform mines data
from 300 million people, 17 million locations, and 1.5 billion conversations daily, according to Dan Neely, the company's founder and chief executive officer.
The deeper integration with Twitter
through an API enables Networked Insights to pull in more data. "We used to jokingly say we're drinking through the Twitter straw," he says. "Now we are drinking through the Twitter garden hose, and
eventually we'll drink through the Twitter fire hose."
Twitter only provides Networked Insights, along with others, with a select sampling of data that allows companies to identify specific
people who influence a brand's products and services. Search engines Google, Microsoft and Yahoo recently became the only companies that receive complete access to "drink" Twitter stats to serve up in
real-time search results.
Aside from integration with Twitter, Neely says date-range analysis allows marketers to look at how campaigns perform and the impact across social networks. Think of a
pebble dropping in a lake, he says. The idea to measure the ripples from that pebble can give marketers a clear view into the influence a campaign can have.
Another important feature provides
insights on trending to identify fads vs. trends -- for example, the ability to track trends through tag clouds as date ranges change. Marketers at Nestle who want to track or change the language
people use to describe the company will want to measure sentiment through tag clouds.
"Combine marketing and anthropology, and to me that creates the new marketer," Neely says. "This is how we
will get the value from social."
Networked Insights also looks at pattern recognition in data. Don't just look at one keyword, but analyze the data around it to better identify the content being
consumed. It will help marketers identify the velocity of a trend and the language of a specific consumer audience, Neely says. It helps to identify love-hate relationships for brands in one phrase.
SocialSense will update automatically to version 2.4 for Networked Insights' 44 existing clients, including Starcom MediaVest Group and Kraft. Agencies make up about 65% of the Madison,
Wis.-based company's clients, with the remainder divided between brands and ad networks.
