• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, June 24, 2018

Consumers aren’t only purchasing smart home devices -- they’re also talking about the subject online, and substantially more as time goes on.

Smart homes have been discussed online since around 2010, but conversations took off starting in 2013 and by 2017 there were more than 250,000 posts relating to smart homes, based on an analysis of online activity.

The analysis by Crimson Hexagon was of millions of English-language posts worldwide across Twitter, Facebook, QQ, Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram and from blogs, comments and forums.

As smart adoption increased over the years, so did the nature of the online mentions, growing from 60% positive in 2010 to 80% positive last year.

Much of the positive sentiment related to excitement about the growing IoT trends, home automation, design customization, integrated apps, seamless systems and nifty gadgets, according to the analysis.

The negative sentiments were driven by customers who deemed smart homes pointless or cumbersome, having data privacy or security concerns and worries about pricing.

Joy was the dominant emotion for smart homes, but fear has increased during the last seven years.

Five components drove the smart home conversations: lighting, security, HVAC, voice assistants and entertainment, and voice assistant discussions have grown the most since 2010. Voice assistants accounted for almost none of the conversations up to 2013, but by 2017 they comprised 20% of conversations. Entertainment conversations were almost the opposite, shrinking from 20% of conversations in 2010 to fewer than 10% in 2017.

Sentiment differed by category, with lighting receiving the most positive comments (93%) and security the lowest (77%). The other positive sentiments in conversations related to entertainment (86%), home assistants (85%) and HVAC (80%).

The top reasons consumers cited for smart-home adoption were that it is futuristic, convenience and energy efficiency. The top reasons on the other side are privacy, being hacked and high costs.

By smart-home brands, more people are taking about Amazon (26%) than Google (23%), Apple (16%), Nest (12%) or Samsung (8%).