Funny thing about "conversations" on blogs, sometimes you have to bounce around different sites to follow along. Yesterday, I wrote Combining social media and traditional research, a follow-up to Validating social media data (it got a little heavy, I know—go watch the video again if you need a break). Today I'll give you a few links to posts that I think are related.
- Guy Hagen posted at length on the strengths and weaknesses of social media research, as well as some specific ideas on combining social media and traditional research. If you wanted to outline the arguments around the new techniques, these will give you a good start.
- Jim Nail responded to Peter Kim's Predicting Super Tuesday winners with brand monitoring with Is prediction even the point of social media? Clearly, some companies are more committed to the use of social media analysis as a research methodology than others. The differences are what make the space interesting.
- The question of how well blogs (especially) and other social media represent the overall population came up last year, with several companies preferring to study online communities over blogs for just that reason.
I think that by default, companies with investment-oriented products like Collective Intellect (and maybe Jodange?) are betting that they *can* predict. But, perhaps for investment purposes, a 1-month accuracy window is sufficient?
The wealth management and investment companies I have spoken to have been lukewarm on the concept, but I could definitely see social media analytics as an extra "due diligence" tool to buttress the predictions of any investment company's internal proprietary systems.
Try substituting trading for investment. A month is a long time in that world. I think you're talking to a different part of the financial community than they are, and the time horizons are different.
Interesting ideas about combining social media and traditional research. If you're interested in a critique of social media analysis, check out Justin Kirby's article here:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/18195.asp
I would point out that at ASOMO, we have calculated the margin of error, provide clients with the proportion of total online sentiment we are analysing and click throughs to the original websites where the opinion appears.
Thanks, Jon. Justin's article is where I started a couple of posts back, actually. And your comments on ASOMO remind me... we need to schedule your briefing soon.