Whether you were lucky or unlucky to be the first or last person on Google+, most people who wanted an invite have now checked out the newest threat to Facebook and Twitter.
Are you a Twitter fan who hates the intruder? Are you a reluctant Facebook user desperate for a new option? Are you a die hard Googlite jumping for joy over yet another Google product? We decided to find out who the fans of G+ are.
First, the standard Conversition methodologies were applied including collecting thousands of comments about Google+, Google Hangouts, and Google Circles from across the internet. Whether the comments were written within the Twitter, Facebook, or Google networks, or from thousands of other forums, blogs, and websites, a wide sample of opinions was gathered. Second, we evaluated how positive or negative the opinions were. Third, we examined the sentiment based on the source of the opinions. Drum roll please….
Twitter: Yessiree – Twitterites generated the smallest percentage of positive opinions, just 20%. Surprised? Doubt it.
Facebook: Did you think they would be second after Twitter? Nope, Facebook users fell closer to the middle with 27% of their opinions in the positive space.
Google+: What? Not the most positive? Nope, 29% of their opinions about G+ were positive. Guess they’re not biased after all!
Digitalpoint: Who, you ask, are these people? A very passionate group of computerites of whom 46% give Google+ the thumbs up. Be here and be square!
I must admit that I’m most surprised that Google+ users didn’t have the most positive opinions. Which result surprised you?
2010 was the year of double rainbows and if you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, just watch this simple YouTube video of someone appreciating nature’s beauty. This video caught the attention of online viewers who quickly made it a viral success with nearly 23 million views.
The phrase “double rainbow” took on new meaning as people used it to describe anything they found to be wonderful or amazing – whether genuine or sarcastically (double yellow lines!, double cheeseburger!).
Let’s take a quick journey and see exactly what happened. Prior to July, mentions of double rainbows were very few. Sure, people were filming and uploading their own double rainbow videos, but none of them had the certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ that would elevate them to viral status. Until July that is.
The video was uploaded to YouTube in January 2010, but it was only after being mentioned in a tweet by Jimmy Kimmel in July 2010 that the video generated a massive spike in hits. People delighted in the seemingly over-appreciation of one of nature’s beauties. And though views have declined over time, referencing the ‘double rainbow’ is still quite popular.
The online community was quick to take up the meme and apply its meaning to anything they possibly could. This word cloud shows the brand names that people most often used in association with the phrase “double rainbow” – bigger words more often, smaller words less often. Skittles candy (“Taste the rainbow!”) and Lucky Charms cereal (“pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”) were the obvious lucky recipients of this meme. Other brands were also praised with this type of new gold star, including Ducati, HTC, and Chanel.
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So, you think you can handle Social Media? Great! Now what?
Well, let’s start at the beginning. What specifically is Social Media? Bypassing the fancy definitions, we can say that it’s a bunch of people coming together to talk and stuff, but not in person. The communication takes place through some sort of technological thingy, usually the Internet. The obvious examples are the ones that everyone has heard about, like facebook, twitter and all the other usual suspects (they’re only the tip of the iceberg by the way).
So, you have decided to start with twitter. You create an account and jump in to see what’s going on in there. You’re going to listen to the people, read their tweets and make everything better! After a while, you will find the first problem: there is a heck of a lot going on twitter. Like really, A LOT! You can read tweets for hours, until your eyes hurt, and get nowhere. Just in there, there are thousands upon thousands of relevant tweets to check out, hidden among millions upon millions of other stuff you don’t care about. And this is just one site. What about other popular sites? What about the whole Internet? You’re going to need some help.
Maybe hiring a couple more guys would be enough? Not really. Hiring a dirty dozen? Not really. Hiring a few thousand people and providing them with training, management and equipment? Maybe that would work, but that sounds awfully expensive. This is not going well.
And it gets worse. It’s just not a matter of finding the content and reading it, that’s only the beginning. The real work comes after that. What’s the sentiment of the content? What are they talking about specifically? What’s valuable and what’s spam?
And, what if you really want to do things right and go all researchy on it. What are the demographics of these people? What about sampling and weighting? What about other stuff you don’t even know about? This is a lot of work, and you’re definitely going to need some help. Help with expertise.
Luckily, there’s one positive thing going on for you: we’re in the future! It’s the year 2010, the 21st century! And we may not have flying cars yet or robot butlers as they promised us, but one thing we do have: information processing power and people who know how to use it. If you’re reading this blog, then you know by now that you’re not the first one to think about taming the Social Media beast. People are out there already doing this, already solving all those problems, and coming up with cold hard numbers and data that you can use to improve things. I know it because I’m one of those people.
It’s a whole new ballgame out there. Things are changing fast. Can you adapt and thrive? It is your choice. The help you need is already out there.
An article in the New York Times this week discussed a research project that is attempting to track the mood of Americans using Twitter as the data source. The project involves researchers from Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Sciences and Harvard Medical School. It is certainly reasonable that a group of scientists can develop algorithms that accurately predict the mood of Americans. However, Twitter data is not simply and instantly predictive of the general population of Americans. Given that only 7% of people who are online even use Twitter, it is risky, and can easily lead to wrong conclusions.
Want to see a real example? No problem.
Let’s look at consumer opinions related to one specific product, the iPad.
First, we gathered thousands of opinions from across the internet, from blogs, microblogs, forums, question and answer sites, personal sites, all of which mentioned the iPad. Sites like YouTube, Blogger, Twitter, and thousands more were included.
Then, we categorized all of the conversations into two groups, 1) everything from Twitter and 2) the entire internet space.
Next, we determined the level of emotion for every online conversation. Specifically, we determined whether the emotion of the conversations was extremely happy, somewhat happy, neutral, somewhat unhappy, or extremely unhappy.
Finally, we created the pretty little charts that you see on the right of this page.
What’s the first thing you notice from these charts?
Not one single chart has two bars that look the same. What is the percentage of tweets that reflect an extremely happy opinion? 15%. What is the comparable number for the entire internet? 5.6%. I hope it’s not just me, but 15% doesn’t look like 5.6%, not even if the 5.6% is averaged up to 6%. There is a big difference in the percentage of people who have extremely happy opinions on Twitter vs the entire Internet.
The same trend is apparent when we look at the percentage of people who are extremely unhappy with the iPad. 11.3% of tweeple are extremely unhappy compared to just 1.9% of the entire internet space. All five of the charts lead to the same conclusions. Twitter results do not equal Internet results.
It’s not 1 to 1
Clearly, the relationship between Twitter data and total internet data is not 1 to 1. It’s impossible to gather Twitter data, analyze the sentiment, and be confident that it represents a wide, more general audience.
Perhaps people on Twitter have more extreme opinions than everyone else; perhaps they are less likely to guard their remarks so that the more extreme opinions are shared; perhaps Twitter opinions are in fact the closest to the average American opinion. Whatever the reason, it is undeniable that the mood on Twitter is unlike anywhere else.
Prepare to be wrong. Prepare to explain contradictions. Generalize Twitter mood at your own risk.
We heard it all yesterday. The amazing, brilliant, stunning, and incredible Flipboard for the iPad had a few problems from server overloads to failed connections with twitter and facebook. Did that phase people at all? Let’s have a look at the most recent online conversations to see how consumer sentiment changed since yesterday.
Overall sentiment: A very slight decrease from 61% positive to 58% positive with 3% (as opposed to 0%) of opinions now in the negative zone. The problems with crashing and connection failures may have bothered a few people, but they just couldn’t damper overall spirits. The Flipboard is still “amazing,” “awesome,” “brilliant,” and “incredible.”
Recommendations: Remained stable at 58% positive. The app still comes highly recommended as the “greatest” thing since the last greatest thing.
Ease of use: Decreased from 70% positive to 62% positive. This is a noticeable decline but still stunningly high given that 30% positive is a score most brands would hope to achieve.
Fashionable: Decreased from 79% positive to 74% positive. A small decline but not nearly enough to take away from the app being “beautiful,” “sleek” and “very cool.”
eReader: Decreased from 68% positive to 64% positive. Today, we also saw 2% of the opinions fall into the negative zone, but overall, people like the app as an ereader.
Facebook: A small decrease from 68% positive to 65% positive. And, today brought 1% of scores into the negative zone, again likely because of the connection issues. People like how the works with facebook.
Twitter: Another small decrease from 65% positive to 61% positive, plus 1% of scores in the negatives also because of the connection issues. People still like how the app works with twitter.
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For the most part, scores decreased by several points. However, since the average positive score for most brands is around 30%, the fact that Flipboard is still registering scores in the mid to high 60s, even after a decline from day 1 is a stunning achievement. With negative opinions reflecting only 1% or 2% of overall opinions, the Flipboard seems to have continued its winning streak directly into day 2.
Apparently, even the crashes and failed connections are unable to counter the boxes of chocolates and bouquets of roses that are being handed to this pretty little app. .
If you thought Old Spice was just for your grandfather, the brand is working hard to change your mind with a series of commercials starring @IsaiahMustafa. The commercials have become a viral hit and have expanded into short videos, each one a unique hilarious reply to people’s online tweets, youtube comments, and questions. Questions from real people, and celebrities like The Ellen Show, Alyssa Milano, and Ryan Seacrest, are all getting individual attention.
How are people describing this campaign? The top words include funny, original, hilarious, brilliant, and genius, definitely words I’d like my brand associated with. But on an aggregate level, the campaign has far surpassed any standards of making the grade. Compared to the average brand which generates about 30% positive opinions, the Old Spice campaign is achieving positive opinions in the 40%, 50%, and 60% ranges.
People appreciate the business side of things, including the product launch (66% positive), the creativity (59% positive), and that it’s a new and different approach (57% positive). But, they are also expressing their appreciation for Isaiah, a manly man himself, giving him top marks for his smile (59% positive), his teeth (57% positive) and his sex appeal (54%).
What isn’t so positive? The ever present fear factor associated with sexuality and homophobia, comments which generate 25% negative opinions. Fortunately though, this small minority of people can’t compete with the millions of people who are loving every minute.
Isaiah, keep on smelling like the man our men could smell like.
With the Golden Globes behind us, let’s have a look at whether viewers agreed with the judges’ choices. We gathered over 200 000 tweets from people chatting about the Golden Globes Awards and categorized them into tweets that were positive, neutral, or negative. We then selected all the tweets that were related to the Best Director of a Motion Picture category and analyzed the results. The chart below illustrates the percentage of tweets that were classified as positive, in other words, they showed a high degree of satisfaction or approval.
First of all, it is clear that even though James Cameron, the Director of Avatar, won in the category of Best Director, he wasn’t necessarily the winner in the viewers’ eyes. In fact, Reitman, the Director of Up in the Air, generated the most positive tweets with 45% of them being positive compared to 42% for Cameron. And, compared to Reitman generating 11% negative tweets, 14% of Cameron’s tweets were negative. It was a pretty close race for viewers, but Reitman came out just slightly ahead with 3% more positive tweets and 3% fewer negative tweets. And just behind Reitman and Cameron is Bigelow, the director of Hurt Locker. It appears that this still wasn’t the year to showcase the first female winner of this award.
At the other end of the spectrum was Tarantino who directed Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino only managed to generate 26% positive tweets. Further, 23% of tweets about him were negative. Some people just needed to display their displeasure at this loss. And finally, our sympathies go to Clint Eastwood, the Director of Invictus, who didn’t make it to our podium because so few people tweeted about him.
The Screen Actors Guild awards are coming up next. Grab some popcorn and let’s see what happens!
Jersey Shore is a new show focusing on a subculture that rarely takes the limelight on television, one populated by extreme personalities who call themselves guidos and guidettes. It has received a lot of heat for being offensive and racist towards Italian people. Some sponsors, such as Dominos Pizza and American Family Insurance, have pulled their ads from the show because of the controversy. In fact, UNICO National protested the show but this did not have an effect. On the other hand, some companies such as BeenVerified.com, a background checking service, have decided that Jersey Shore does in fact represent their brand and have since become sponsors.
What do tweeple think of all of this? As the blue line in the chart below shows, the volume of chatter has steadily increased since the show previewed on television. Given the controversy surrounding this show, the volume of chatter will no doubt continue to increase.
What is particularly interesting is the sentiment trend. For the week before the show premiered, tweeple shared a range of opinions about the show resulting in fewer than 50% of opinions being positive. However, most recently, and after the show has aired, sentiment drastically increased and currently sits at more than 80% positive. It seems that the initial fears of racism were outweighed by the many people who seem to enjoy the peculiarities of the characters portrayed on the show. Time will tell how other sponsors react as the show increases its audience base, and more people are exposed to the controversy.
Years past saw Cabbage Patch Kids (adults will remember), Tickle Me Elmos (adults’ kids will remember), and other hot toys tempt the imagination and money of millions of people. This year is no different with Zhu Zhu pets, the electronic hamster that promises all of the fun without the mess, becoming the Toy of the Year. The toys were on people’s minds for a while, but as the chart shows, it wasn’t until early November that chatter volume broke through the noise and registered a blip in the Twitter stream. This blip reoccurred in the middle of November when the toys began to run out and consumers were attempting to find locations where they could still purchase the toy.
Despite the ups and downs in the volume of chatter, sentiment towards these toys has been near perfect reaching almost 100% positive every single week for a couple of months now. The low price-point is no doubt a major factor for their popularity in this economy. Notice, however, that just recently, sentiment has started to decline. This is likely the results of two factors.
The toys have sold out nearly everywhere and consumers are expressing their dissatisfaction with being unable to purchase them.
Concerns have just been raised that the toys may be recalled due to health issues.
We will be certain to track how sentiment changes as more is learned about whether there is a potential hazard. Stay tuned!
