tweetfeel/biz Spots the Oprah Love

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

In a story that had nothing to do with weightloss or people jumping on couches, the Oprah Winfrey show was in the news yet again on November 19th and 20th 2009. The announcement that Oprah had decided to end the Oprah Winfrey show after 25 years was a shocker for some people.  This stunning announcement is quite clear in a very simple chart of the volume of Oprah tweets. In the days before the announcement, the volume of tweets fluctuated slightly. Then suddenly, on Nov 19 and 20, tweets mentioning Oprah showed a tremendous spike. You don’t need to have color vision to know which is the blue line in the chart below.  The spike, however, lasted only a couple of days after which time the volume of tweets returned to its standard trend.

However, overall sentiment did  not show any major change. Sentiment hovered around 75% positive for the Oprah Show before Nov 19. Then, it then decreased very slightly to around 68% positive at the time of the announcement. Within just a few days though, sentiment had increased once more to about78% positive. Why is this happening?

What types of emotions were people exhibiting in their tweets? As shown in the pie chart below, nearly half of the emotions expressed by tweeple were those of love.  Even though fans might have been upset at the announcement, they were still very fond of Oprah and her show. The next most popular emotions were equally split between expressions of anger and sadness, each reflecting 19% of the pie, but not in sufficient volumes to cause a significant shift in the overall positivity of emotion. Surprise and courage were next in line, finishing off the last 8% and 6% of the pie.

These sample tweets show exactly why sentiment stayed high. Fans had no difficulty expressing both their love for Oprah and their sadness about the show.

• @Oprah SAD SAD SAD BUT,IF YOU LOVE SOMEONE LET THEM GO.I WOULD LOVE TO SEE ELLEN GO ON AT 4:00PM.WE WILL STILL SEE YOU LOVE SUE
• @Oprah I love your program,I loved having you on Twitter
• The Oprah Winfrey Show to end in 2011 after 25 years on air! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8370789.stm sad times…
• awww! Oprah is crying! I love her!

So, where do we think viewers will turn? One of the sample tweets should have given you a clue. If you look at the chatter, Ellen Degeneres seems to be unstoppable with 73% of the chatter among Oprah fans. Tyra Banks is next in line with 15% of the chatter, followed by Rachael Ray with 12% of the chatter. It would take a miracle for Tyra or Rachael to jump over Ellen, but who knows, maybe Oprah will still be number one… except on her OWN network.

tweetfeel/biz gives the Inside Scoop on Balloon Boy Sentiment

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Balloon Boy quickly faded into history once the story was discovered to be a hoax. But, the tall tale of a boy set adrift in a balloon provided much fodder for the twitter world. Let’s go on a Balloon Boy journey ourselves, but this time through the eyes of tweetfeel/biz.

We begin our journey on October 15, 2009. The news broke and Twitter was immediately alight with Balloon Boy tweets. Based on the two week period from October 15 to October 29, the blue line shows that 31% of tweets occurred on Day 1, dropped to half that amount by Day 2, and almost disappeared ten days after that. Day 1 tweets hovered at the 50/50 positive negative line (green line) as some people immediately felt it was a hoax while other people expressed concern for the safety of the phantom boy. But, the tide shifted just a few days later as it became widely known that Balloon Boy was a hoax. At this point, the sentiment, among those few people still tweeting, became overwhelmingly positive.

But what were people really thinking? Why did emotions become so positive for a situation that caused dire panic among emergency rescue personnel? A bit of digging into some tweetfeel/biz themes helps to build this story. It turns out that people weren’t expressing their positive sentiments in the sense of being happy about the situation, but rather they were expressing happiness by way of humor. In fact, about 65% of tweets focused on the humour of the situation! People were particularly interested in the fact that the media picked up on the tale even though it was a hoax.

• LOL I love how Balloon Boy is a trending topic.
• Haha, #balloonboy was in the house the whole time. American news just got pranked.
• LMAO balloon boy. Nicely done.

Not everyone thought it was so funny though. Another 21% of people were angry about the situation for several reasons. They were upset that they had been deceived themselves, that people’s time had been wasted worrying and attempting to save a child, and that the parents had simply behaved in a disrespectful manner towards everyone including their own children. Another 13% of tweets expressed sadness, particularly in the early days, about the situation assuming it was real, and then the sadness subsequently turned to disappointment.

• BOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! I hate you Balloon Boy. Way to let me down. You trickster.
• i hate #balloonboy as much as I hated #eliangonzales
• Eff you balloon boy!
• Awww the 911 call made me cry balloonboy
• The Colorado Balloon Boy family is pathetic !
• It landed, and nobody was inside. This is very sad. #balloonboy

If you’re still curious about the incident, Wikipedia has an article that will answer all your questions. If you’re curious about tweetfeel/biz, give it a free testdrive yourself over at tweetfeel.com/biz.

Conversition Launches Enhanced Twitter Sentiment Product as tweetfeel/biz

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Conversition Strategies announces the launch of www.tweetfeel.com/biz, a subscription based service site that lets companies track the sentiment and content of Twitter chatter with accuracy and specificity.

Toronto, November 4, 2009: CONVERSITION releases www.tweetfeel.com/biz, a subscription service website that allows users to monitor the feelings Twitter users express towards products, companies, and other popular topics such as celebrities and movies. This new offering builds on the success of the free consumer version, and includes an increased focus on accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Tweetfeel.com/biz incorporates traditional research methodologies to ensure that the entire process of measuring and reporting sentiment is as valid and reliable as possible. After users specify the relevant search terms and keywords, www.tweetfeel.com/biz immediately begins to gather tweets in real-time. www.tweetfeel.com/biz then uses a multitude of complex algorithms to evaluate tweets in terms of both positive and negative sentiment.

Unique features available in www.tweetfeel.com/biz include the ability to create very specific and accurate search terms by specifying terms that must be searched and terms that must not be searched. Users can also build customized stories to monitor exactly how people are talking about each search term. These stories, or themes, allow users to identify the most popular and least popular topics, thereby permitting actionable insights to occur. Charts and graphs allow users to easily monitor changes in brand sentiment over time.

Tessie Ting explains, “Sentiment analysis is a difficult process in itself, but by developing a very comprehensive set of algorithms, and relying on our knowledge of valid research practices, www.tweetfeel.com/biz demonstrates a level of validity that makes brand tracking of Twitter data highly reliable and very simple.”

“This industry is no longer just about sentiment,” says Jean Davis. “It’s about understanding why people have positive or negative feelings towards something. Understanding the story behind the emotions turns raw data into useful data.”

For a personalized demonstration of www.tweetfeel.com/biz, please contact Jean Davis.

www.tweetfeel.com/biz offers subscriptions for individual or small business users as well as enterprise pricing.

About Conversition Strategies:

Conversition Strategies is a marketing research firm that listens to consumers by applying scientific research principles to the collection and analysis of online social data. Our strength lies in combining the expertise of respected market researchers with that of social media mavens. Our services are complementary to traditional market research methodologies and help you gain a more holistic view of how people engage in conversation regarding your product, service or brand.

For more information please feel free to contact:

Jeremy Chaput | jeremy@conversition.com | 647.998.3854

Jean Davis |  jean@conversition.com | 631.838.6460

http://www.conversition.com | http://www.tweeteel.com/biz | RESEARCH EVOLVED

Come See Us at TWRTCON and 140

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

tweetfeel/biz is ready to leave the nest and we’re ready to announce it at two upcoming conferences.

First off is TWTRCON in DC on October 22 where we are a sponsor and will be running demos of tweetfeel/biz. Then, on October 27, we will be at the 140 conference in LA also sponsoring and running demos for attendees. Both Jean and Tessie will be there signing autographs as well so be sure to stop at our booth! They’d also love to give you a personal demonstration of how you can use tweetfeel/biz to help your business. See you there!

Like tweetfeel? Vote For Us!

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

If you think tweetfeel is so fun and easy that everyone should know about us, nominate us for best Twitter app! Just click on this button and tell the Open Web Awards!

Welcome Jeff and Venice!

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

It’s been a busy few months for us! We’ve spoken to many people about our evolisten product and interest is quite high! As a result, we have a number of beta test clients who are giving us great feedback. Of course, this means many new things for us to work on. It also means that we needed more programmers and researchers to join our team. After a long search, we are happy to introduce you to Jeff and Venice. We look forward to hearing about their favorite books and brands!

More Love for tweetfeel

Monday, August 24th, 2009

The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle just published articles mentioning tweetfeel. Have a look!

Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts

By ALEX WRIGHT, The New York Times
Published: August 23, 2009

Computers may be good at crunching numbers, but can they crunch feelings? The rise of blogs and social networks has fueled a bull market in personal opinion: reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression. For computer scientists, this fast-growing mountain of data is opening a tantalizing window onto the collective consciousness of Internet users….  For casual Web surfers, simpler incarnations of sentiment analysis are sprouting up in the form of lightweight tools like Tweetfeel, Twendz and Twitrratr. These sites allow users to take the pulse of Twitter users about particular topics. A quick search on Tweetfeel, for example, reveals that 77 percent of recent tweeters liked the movie “Julie & Julia. [Read more here]

Web offering more gauges about happiness

By Alejandro Martínez-Cabrera, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, August 18, 2009

On a happiness scale of 1 to 10, the world scored a 6.16 Monday, according to Emotionr, a Web site that invites users to “store and keep track of your feelings” and “discover what makes people happy.” Meanwhile, TweetFeel, which analyzes Twitter posts based on emoticons, words and phrases, showed that on the same day, 101 members used positive language when writing about President Obama, compared with 71 negative comments. [Read more here]

Sentiment Analysis 101

Friday, July 17th, 2009

tweetfeel gives you a taste of it, but really, what is sentiment analysis all about?

At it’s most basic level, sentiment analysis involves reviewing messages or conversations and evaluating the writer’s opinion towards the topic. For instance, someone who tweets a message such as “I like Chuck Norris” is telling people they have a positive opinion towards Chuck Norris. On the other hand, someone who writes “Chuck Norris sucks” clearly has a negative opinion. After assembling all of the messages that mention Chuck Norris, one can easily bucket them into messages with positive opinions and messages with negative opinions.

But, the easy part isn’t so easy. First, one needs to determine which sentiments are positive or negative. Obviously, we’re talking automated sentiment analysis so we need some solid indicators for positive opinions such as words like happy, love, or delightful. Solid indicators for negative opinions would be words such as hate, stupid, or ugly. Simply coming up with that list is difficult enough, but some words just aren’t so easy to assign to buckets. For instance, is “Way to go” positive or negative? People often use this phrase in a positive way but in recent years, it has become a very sarcastic remark that one uses in a negative fashion. The written word is full of words and phrases that have contradictory, ambiguous, or sarcastic meanings. Humans can only catch about 85% of those which means it’s pretty much impossible for an automated process to catch all of them either.

Another problem with bucketing messages is that people don’t think linearly. If I say “I love Chuck Norris and football sucks,” it’s clear to people that I’ve messaged two distinct opinions about two distinct topics. Once you start getting into more complicated grammar though, it can become impossible to tell which topic was rated which way. Automated evaluations of the message have a much harder time differentiating the two. It’s a topic of great interest to academics and eventually, we’ll figure it out.

In the end though, it’s not about individual messages. It’s not about me and what I have to say. It doesn’t matter that your uncle Bob is always wrong and that your Aunt Mary doesn’t know who Chuck Norris is. It doesn’t matter that 5% or 10% of the messages are in the wrong bucket. What matters is the collective wisdom, the wisdom that comes from large sample sizes. When you average opinions across hundreds or thousands of people, the final answer is usually the right one.

TweetFeel Testimonials

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

Well, tweetfeel officially launched yesterday and we’ve had an amazing response! We are delighted to hear that so many people are having fun checking it out. In fact, so many people have been checking it out that we hit our Twitter API call rates and haven’t been able to run everybody’s search! Don’t worry, though. We’re speeded things up from our end so you should see some improvements soon!

We’ve been reading all the comments people are making about tweetfeel.  You’re right, it’s not perfect nor will it ever be perfect. But, it’s fun, it’s pretty quick, it’s pretty accurate, and it’s free. How can anyone resist that?

Below are just a few testimonials from our friends. Thanks guys!

1. bootdisk If you’ve not checked out http://www.tweetfeel.com/ yet – have a look, interesting way of measuring ‘feelings’ towards people’s tweets!
2. chrish10 @VolumeGroup im impressed with #tweetfeel, looks very good and extremely useful
3. LenKendall Have you checked out Tweetfeel.com? It’s a very cool tweet sentiment application. Simple/Pretty interface. http://is.gd/1ytSQ
4. zoodigital Nice twitter tool – http://www.tweetfeel.com
5. Legend_Kiiller Crazy! RT @mashable: TweetFeel: Real-Time Sentiment Search for Twitter – http://bit.ly/JpBsjabout
6. wearelondon tweetfeel.com cool error msg “We have failed you and we are sorry.Try another search term & we promise, we’ll do better…” (@AndrewGrill)
7. hridayramshenoy checking out TweetFeel. Damn good idea.
8. vishnugopal TweetFeel – Really cool. Try Windows Vista or Macbook pro http://tr.im/sdwU (via @brupm)

The Unveiling of TweetFeel

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

TweetFeel has received a lovely welcome by the internet world. Here are just a few of the mentions from the last day or two.

TweetFeel gives instant brand feeling

by Dan Leahul, Brand Republic 14-Jul-09, 11:15
LONDON – TweetFeel, a new Twitter application which allows marketers to instantly gather the overall sentiment of their brands, has gone live as use of the microblogging website continues to surge after slowing slightly last month.

The Washington Post Publishes tweetfeel Review

Published July 13, 2009

TechCrunch Reviews tweetfeel

by Robin Wauters on July 13, 2009
TweetFeel is a new web service by marketing research startup Conversition Strategies that combines real-time search for Twitter with sentiment detection algorithms. The idea is for people to use TweetFeel to run search queries for products, celebrities, companies, brands etc. and thus get a notion of what the average Twitter user thinks of them in a matter of seconds…

Research Live Reviews tweetfeel

Published July 13, 2009
Social media research agency Conversition has developed a website through which people can search Twitter for mentions of brands, celebrities and products, and to see whether the tweets are positive or negative….

Mashable Reviews tweetfeel

By Adam Ostrow, July 13, 2009
TweetFeel is a new Twitter search tool along the same lines, but instead of showing one or the other, gives you a numerical score as to how positive or negative tweets are about a given topic. Its analysis is based not just on emoticons, but also words and phrases…