The Nielsen Company released some metrics surrounding the new Harry Potter movie and book today. Putting social media data from BuzzMetrics in a wider collection of Nielsen market data is an interesting way to illustrate the company's view that measurement is the central activity in social media analysis.
How many ways can you look at the data? Harry Potter charms the entertainment industry:
- Book sales (Nielsen BookScan)
- Box office sales (Nielsen EDI)
- Advertising (Nielsen Monitor-Plus)
- DVD/Video sales (Nielsen VideoScan)
- Internet traffic (Nielsen//NetRatings)
- Internet buzz (Nielsen BuzzMetrics)
- Music sales (Nielsen SoundScan)
- TV ratings (Nielsen Media Research)
- Moviegoer profile (Nielsen Cinema)
- Consumer package good sales (ACNielsen)
Very impressive - but do you think they'll be able to bring it all together? (see http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2007/02/nielsen_death_s.html for past thoughts...)
[noting the date in my calendar that PK acknowledged my existence...]
I expect that Nielsen will find useful ways to put the BuzzMetrics data together with their other services, yes. But I don't expect a monopoly on social media measurement. BuzzMetrics hasn't directly addressed the market beyond English media yet, for one thing, and I expect that multilingual services will be increasingly required by global companies.
I'm not sure that social media lend themselves to a monopoly on measurement; the barriers to entry are too low. The data are available to everyone with an Internet connection and the right hardware/software, unlike other services that require access to proprietary sources (sales data, for example). And in any case, I think that measurement is only one slice of a more interesting pie that includes monitoring for various functions and platforms for managing companies' engagement with online communities.
I expect to see more variation, rather than less.
One question about the Death Star analogy... who are the planets that the giant ship destroys? Marketers? Consumers? (Don't you love pushing a metaphor until it snaps?)
Thanks for your comment, Pete. One of these days, we'll have to meet in person.
lol! It's just because I finally got around to adding a "brand monitoring" folder to my feeds (the pipes thing is OK, not great.
Change is constant and one reason I'm not updating the Forrester Wave this year is because while a lot has occured, many changes are still nascent - I expect that by mid-2008 we'll see some more stability in business models and strategies.
To run with the analogy - the planets are competitors, e.g. Gomez, Arbitron, et al. Does that position TNS as the rebel alliance? More appropriate would be a open source (e.g. Buzzmonitor) outcry...
Well, if you need any help with the search feeds, just let me know. ;-)