1.
Sysom nc.
mos In
Socia
S al Media
a
Business Intelligence
e for
Social Media
Mee usin
M ts Bu ess
contact@
@sysomos.c
com Intelligen
nce
www.sy
ysomos.com
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V Magazine & & Cana
adian
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M eting A ciation
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te 3
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onto, ON
Repor
R rt on SSocial
l Med
dia
M5T 1L6 Analyt
A tics
Whi
itepaper
April 2009 Dr. Nick Ko
oudas

2. 2
ABST
TRACT
User generat ted content (e.g., web log gs or blogs, social network ks, micro‐blogging such as
twitter, wikis
t s, collaborativ
ve tagging, ne ews, music sit tes, podcast aand video sharing sites) are e
proliferating at unpreceddented rates. The numbe quantifying user part
ers ticipation aree
astonishing; more than half a billion i
individuals in social networking sites w
n worldwide, in n
excess of 10 million blo
00 ogs, millions of users utilizing micro‐‐blogging serrvices, etc. In
n
aggregate such services g generate very y large amoun nts of data on a daily basis. Commonly y
the word soc
t cial media is u
used to refer to this inform mation collecctive, primarily contributed d
by individualss online.
● ● ●
Historically co orporate data abases have been accumu ulating inform mation about any aspect o of
a business fr rom employm ment records to corporate supplies an sales reco
nd ords. Business
us
ser generat
ted Intelligence is a mature s of technologies offerin deeper un
set ng nderstanding of such data
a.
content: For example such technologies inform analysts and executives n not only that t
the volume o of
sales in a reg
s gion is increa
asing or decr
reasing but a
also point to the reasons behind such
s h
o blogs changes.
o works
social netw
o wikis
o podcasts In this article
e we argue th hat business intelligence t technologies and function
nalities can bee
o microbloggs of great serv
vice to social media as w
well. This wea of inform
alth mation contai invaluable
ins e
knowledge and intelligenc ce for marketers, public r relations agen
ncies, advertisers, politica
al
o news
campaigns, la aw enforceme ent agencies among many y others.
o video
● ● ●

3. 3
INTR
RODUCTION
N – FROM D ATA TO INT
TELLIGENCE
Efficient collection, archiving and cleaning of such coll
g lective knowledge provides the found
dation for rob
bust analytics
from which busin ness intelligen may be e
nce extracted. Su analytics can enable o to contra events ac
uch one ast cross multiple
e
time periods and identif when and where, and most impo
s fy d d ortantly for w
what reasonss,
perceptions or acceptance of brands a and products are changing.
1‐2 For exa
ample we can identify the target dem
n e mographic (e.g males in e
g., eastern US o
of
ages 19‐29) tthat have ext tremely posit
tive opinions about a new tech gadget.
. Similarly, wee
may locate the target demographic with the mo negative opinions abo the same
ost out e
gadget and automatically discover the reasons behind su uch sentiment (a lot o of
disappointment around the screen size e and graphiccs in the new gadget).
3 By tapping
g into the info rated by users on a daily b
ormation collective gener basis, one can
n
identify crisi events for brands, pro
is r oducts, indiv
viduals or the general pu
e ublic, as they
y
● ● ● happen and react effectiv vely.
4 One can e
effectively ide
entify how ideas or rumor
rs spread across the globe
e and identify
y
key influenti sources th primarily contribute to such spread (e.g., the c
ial hat o crisis situationn
Analytical Capacities for a brand started when n a particular
r posting apppeared on a b blog with widde readership p,
escalated intto several on nline forums aand subsequently made it t to wide circ
culation news
1.
1 Demographics sources; the top 10 blog and forums actively wr
gs riting about t crisis with the highes
the st
2.
2 Sentimen nt readership can be subseq quently identified).
3.
3 Crisis
Managem ment 5 Gain insigh
ht on the imp
pact of an adv
vertising campaign around
d the globe as
s a function o
of
4.
4 Influence er time (positivve sentiment towards a br rand increase ed steadily inn a particular demographic
following a p
particular online ad camp eceiving the most positive
paign with the video ad re e
Identifica
ation
engagement t online).
5.
5 Measurem ment
6.
6 Comparis son 6 Obtain feedback on how key comp petitive products and bra
ands fare com
mparatively at
7 Engagement
7. tions around the world o in aggrega across se
several locat or ate, elect demogrraphic groups
(professional males in th 30's pref product A to B in the US, but the situation is
heir fer A
different in C
Canada).
● ● ●
7 Identify ke
ey communit
ties or individ to engage with (a technol
duals online t logy centered
d
community w with specific f focus on wifi enabled gadgets). Taking such desired d functionality
y
one step fuurther, it is possible to contrast suc informatio with key performance
ch on e
indicators (e
e.g., volume o sales as a function of t
of time) and un
nderstand cor
rrelations and
d
influence of social media on the bottom line.
It is e
evident that the ability to make sense of the infor
o e rmation in so
ocial media o
offers tremen
ndous value to marketing
g,
publi relations a brand co
ic and onscious corp
porations as they are no able to obtain continu
ow uous feedbac from their
ck

4. 4
customers understand issues, rea to them as well as efficiently engage with
s, act h
● ● ● consumerrs. Such ability
y is becoming
g increasingly
y important.
“N
New media a, social A variety of studies point to changing trends in the ways people commmunicate and d
exchange information, the ways pe eople choose to be inform med, the typess of preferred d
media and innternet media for their enterta ainment. New w media, social media, and nnectivity has
d internet con
onnectivity
co y has become in ncreasingly immportant. As a result, thi has led to fundamental shifts in the
s is e
beecome incr
reasingly way people research p products to ob btain informa ation and the way in which h opinions are e
im
mportant... this has expressed d. Given the v volume of inf formation inv volved it is ev
vident that an
ny attempt to o
manually make sense of this info ormation collective is at best extremely slow and d
led
d to fundamental expensive e, and more likely destined d to fail.
sh
hifts”
Technolog gical advance enable th effective processing o very large volumes o
es he of e of
● ● ● informatioon in real tim
me. Hence wee outline the challenges associated wit th an attemp pt
to provid business intelligence insights utilizing the soc
de cial media c
collective and
d
highlight h
how technolo ogy can aid the ability to collect, proce
ess, and mos st importantlyy
social media.
interpret s
DAT A COLLECTI
ION
Socia media, whi consists of blogs, wiki message b
al ich o is, boards, social networks, p
podcasts, mic
croblogging, bookmarking
g,
and o
online videos, is a highly diverse and heeterogenous s set of data. Collecting data
a from heteroogeneous souurces presents
sever
ral challenges
s; especially r
related to diss
similar data f
formats, data types and no on standard m
meta‐data taggs.
An addditional challenge is related to data ssource discov
very. Blogs (esspecially thosse not residinng on hosted services such
h
as blo
ogspot or live
ejournal) need to be discovered the mo oment they are created. If f this data is t
to be used eff
fectively, new
w
information from blogs (new b blog posts), so
ocial network
ks and the res st of the sociaal media colle
ective, should
d be collected
d
the m
moment they are publicly available. Collectively, mu ultiple million opinions aree posted onlin ne by consummers on a daily
y
basis
s. Given the rrapid evolutio
on of social m
media servicess and the eve er increasing volume of da ata, robust an
nd exhaustivee
data collection is a
a fundamental first step in
n enabling business intellig
gence on soci ial media.
TA CLEANIN
DAT NG AND SPA
AM REMOVA
AL
A la
arge fraction of the information in us generated content is spam. According to some
ser d e
stattistics, more t
than half of th he content ho osted at blogs
spot (a blog h
hosting service provided by y
Goo ogle) is spam. . Spam is prim marily create ed for search engine optim
mization purp poses but alsoo
for malicious adv vertising and phishing atta acks. Although there are mmany ways to o create spam
m,
the one that is mmore pronoun nced is malicio ous content. Spammers in nject content t unrelated to
o,
say, a blog post in order to c
, cause the po to be rele
ost evant to many possible se
earch queries
s.

5. 5
● ● ● Then th actual (sp
he pam) post commonly cont
tains links to several sites (advertising
o g
malicio
ous content).
“Thhe presence of spam
The pre esence of spaam is harmful to any attem mpt to under rstand conten nt from socia al
is h
harmful to any
media. Spam conte introduce noise and clutters any emerging discussion or
ent es d
atteempt to un
nderstand themes around top of intere It is imp
s pics est. perative to iddentify and r
remove spam m
conntent from social before processing ssocial media content. A v
variety of tec
chniques to r
remove spam m
media” exist. S
Such techniques aid to a certain ext
a tent further processing o content to
of o
facilitat
te automated d comprehens sion; as spam
m filtering tech hniques evolv ve, identifying
g
● ● ● and removing spam is an ongoing battle f providers of business intelligence
m for s e
solutionns on social m
media.
ANA
ALYTICS
The key to unleashing the poower of socia media is ga
al aining enhannced understa anding of its content. A s
starting point
woulld be to obtai in simple met trics on the vvolume of me entions of ent tities of intere
est in online content. Having spam free e
conte is impera
ent ative in order for such co
r meaningful. T functionality will allo to observe
ounts of mentions to be m This ow e
incre
ease or decrea ase in the volume of ment tions (or buzz
z) around an entity of inte erest and inde eed being abl le to compare e
severral entities of
f interest in te
erms of ment tions online (
(being related d products, co ompetitors, e etc). Several ssolutions exisst
along
g these lines iincluding som me free solutions.
We ar rgue that it is possible to obtain unde
s erstanding of social media far superior
f a
than wwhat is prese ently available in the form of counts of mentions and content
s
clippinngs. An incre ease or a de ecrease to the volume o mentions of an entity
of y
probably corresponds to some event of int
e terest. Being able to und
g derstand such h
events requires s
s significant ef ffort if the volume is high and/or if multiple e
attribuutes/features s/properties a are commonly associated with the entity of interest t.
The first powerful functionality is the abilit to underst
y ty tand discussio topics and
on d
identif fy the main c conversations s around an e entity of interest. This will enable us to o
furthe focus on w
er what is actually important and refine o search fo information
our or n
there is a lot of active discussion arou the 'scre size' of a specific tech
(e.g., t t und een a h
gadget as well as a a different di iscussion threead around it ts 'wifi' capabbilities; based
d
on this s information n we can quickly focus on e each discussio on separately y).
In many cases th volume of chatter/disc
he f cussion aroun a specific topic will be vast, easily surpassing thousands o
nd y of
ment tions of the bbrand of interest. In that case powerfu ul summariza ation features s can readily distil what is
s important in n
the d
discussion, saaving time an cost assoc
nd ciated with re
eading all the content. Re
e ecent advanc cements in su
ummarization n
technnology enabl very fast summaries of large document collec
les ctions. The b
basic idea be
ehind summa arization is to
o
transsform documents into points into a hig gh dimension nal 'document space' and subsequently y reduce the dimension o of
this space, by esssentially kee ubspaces that contain the most infor
eping only su e rmation. Com mmonly diver and polar
rse
opiniions exist abo topics, products and their feature The ability to understa the sentiment of opin
out es. y and nions towards

6. 6
speci topics or entities of interest is imperative. Thi will enable power grou
ific is e uping and sum
mmarization of discussion
n
around positive and negative s sentiment ena abling further
r topical analysis across se
entiments.
Socia media is a truly glob phenomenon; content exists in a languages
al bal all s.
● ● ● Suppport for search as well as advanced a
analytics acro all languages is a key
oss y
requ
uirement. The requiremen becomes a necessity f global co
e nt for orporations to o
“T
The ability tto track
k issues acrosss the planet.
un
nderstand t the Given the diversity of social m media sources, the ability to identify in nfluential and
d
sentiment of f opinions horitative indi
auth ividuals in eac ch media sou urce is very immportant. Althhough severa al
towards specific topics s or simp measures of authority exist today (e.g., numbe of in links t a blog) we
ple y er to e
argue that the ac
ccumulated h history of the online activ of individ
e vity duals enables
ntities of in
en nterest is much richer form ms of authority y and influence to emerge e, especially w
when they aree
im
mperative”” ” couppled with specific busine objectives. Availability of technical tools with
ess y h
abilit to underst
ty tand varied business obje ectives in order to condu influencer
uct
● ● ● searcch is thereforre of critical im
mportance.
Finallly, across s
social media sources, several topic communi
a cal ities emergee.
porting efficie identification of such communities across topics as they em
Supp ent s merge and e
evolve is an a
additional key
y
requirement. Giv the fragm
ven mentation of social medi today acro multiple heterogeneo sources t ability to
f ia oss ous the o
erstand and associate communities together across sources is a p
unde pressing need
d.
GEO GRAPHY AN
ND DEMOGR
RAPHICS
Social m
media conten nt is contribut ted by users, individuals r
residing in dif
fferent places
of the w
world as well as belongin to differen demograph groups, h
ng nt hic having diverse
e
interest ts, backgrounnds and profe essions. Captuuring informaation about thhe location as
well as demographic informatio about the individuals contributing information
s on e g n
offers a
a way to obta ain understan nding of social media in va
arious geographies, diverse e
demogr raphic or inteerest groups.
Such in
nformation o offers enhanc ced understaanding of particular inter
rest to thosee
aiming to comprehe geographies or demo
end ographics. Co
oupled with the ability to
o
factor t
time in the analysis, it offers a powerful capabbility to und
derstand how w
percept tions and opinnions change e temporally.

7. 7
CON
NCLUSION
Social media are empowe
S ering individu
uals and are redefining t media la
the andscape. We e
argued that t
a technology ca empower marketers a public re
an and elations speciialists to gainn
enhanced und
e derstanding oof social media, offering functionality faar beyond wh hat is available e
to market place The second generation of social me
oday in the m e. n edia analytics is here as a
a
result of technnology breakt throughs aligned to meet business nee eds. This new generation o of
social media analysis platf
forms offers a convergen of busine intelligence and socia
nce ess al
media.
m