Attensity: Friday Night Spam Fest
December 10, 2011
Short honk: Here’s an opinion for my one or two readers. I am confused about email marketing from search and content processing companies. Is spam a best practice? Is spam a signal of marketing need or sales desperation? Is spam better than relying on satisfied customers to generate referrals?
ArnoldIT does not do “spam” via email. Whenever I give a talk, I am a veritable Iowa-inspired food production factory of low grade calories. But at age 67, what do you want from a semi retired goose in rural Kentucky?
Here’s the story:
I was at dinner on December 9, 2011, and my wretched mobile device buzzed. I thought I had the gizmo on silent.
Wrong.
A quick look and what do I see, fork paused with a chunk of fried spam half way to my goosely bill. In my opinion, spamming me in Harrod’s Creek during dinner time is the email equivalent of an 800 call from a telemarketer pitching a roof repair deal.
Digital spam. Friday night. Dinner time. Brilliant I suppose.
Here what I received, ruining my appetite for the “real” stuff I was nibbling at the time: “Attensity to Deliver Real Time Audience Analytics on Republican Debate.” Who mailed this missive? sender@attensity.com. Okay, spam mavens, get that email address: sender@attensity.com.
What does Attensity promise me as my real spam cools?
Well, the goose is energized. Here’s the low calorie pitch:
The reports will be driven by Attensity’s real-time social analytics solution, which gives organizations the ability to monitor and analyze over 75 million online and social media sources, as well as internal sources such as emails, surveys and communities, and extract business insights from those conversations. The solution is part of Attensity’s award-winning suite of multi-channel customer analytics and response applications.
Believe it or not, Attensity, one of the “leaders” in understanding the “voice of the customer” or sentiment analysis found to evoke sentiment from me. I don’t think about Attensity as a customer support outfit. Nope. Nope. Nope. I think about Attensity’s roots and its more fascinating line of business. Navigate to LinkedIn and learn this:
Welcome to Attensity Government Systems — the broadest suite of semantic applications and engines to help you realize your agency objectives through the power of text. Attensity’s products and solutions, our dedicated government field engineering team, along with our network of defense, consulting, and solutions integrators are delivering results every day to key government agencies in intelligence, law enforcement, civilian service, and defense. By selecting and implementing Attensity’s solutions, these organizations are better understanding and responding to citizen needs, and connecting the dots to prevent terror and crime. Source: http://www.linkedin.com/company/attensity-government-systems
To put this snippet in context, you may find these links helpful.
- Reading conversations with some “color” at this link
- AGS launch. You can request more information here
- Triple search
- “Attensity offers to listen for governments, law enforcement”
- Attensity Analyze 5.5 Release Provides Large-Scale Data Grid Offering for Voice of the Customer Analytics.
Who funded Attensity? Lots of folks, including an important government agency? Here’s a link which may be of interest.
Now what’s fascinating is that Attensity is into the voice of the customer thing.
In my own algorithmic method, the Attensity marketing effort gets an “unsatisfactory” for email marketing effectiveness. I assume an azure chip consultant, a former middle school teacher, or a failed search engine optimization expert cooked up this campaign.
Here’s a thought.
Check out the non spamming alternatives to Attensity. You can get sentiment methods from folkslike ExpertSystem, ClearCI.com, the French outfit PolySpot, and Infonic Lexalytics operation, among others.
One nagging question for me: Why is Attensity spamming me on Friday night. 8:33 pm?
Brilliance, desperation, a Hail Mary from a football university in Utah?
Stephen E Arnold, December 10, 2011
Freebie, gentle reader, freebie. The goose’s feathers are ruffled.
Lexalytics Trains Your Computer!
September 27, 2011
Lexalytics competes in the realm of text analysis. Its Salience engine helps companies track what people are saying about their products on the internet. Seth Redmore, VP of Product Management at Lexalytics, talks sentiment analysis with David Cox in, “Train Your Computer, Monitor Your Brand Online Using Sentiment Analysis.”
Sentiment analysis is quite a task for a computer. Language is shaded with tone and intonation and the same line of written text can often mean two very different things. Redmore’s cites how internet buzz surrounding the BP oil spill was incorrectly interpreted as positive by computer systems. We learned:
When you looked at the content, the way it was being described was that it was the “biggest,” “largest” spill–not “worst.” That’s a hard thing to wrap your head around. I as a human know an oil spill is bad, but when a machine is interpreting it, from the perspective of the oil spill, things are good.
The field is not perfect yet, but Redmore sees exciting advances on the horizon. Wikipedia could be harnessed as a natural language tutorial for computer systems. In-person communicates will continue to be shaped by the technologies that make online or virtual communications possible. Keep an eye on Lexalytics for the newest advances in NLP and artificial intelligence. Oh, and as for training my computer, I am waiting. A combination of Watson and Salience might be an interesting combination for a TV game show demo too.
Emily Rae Aldridge, September 27, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Lexalytics Tries a Modified Freemium Promotion
August 17, 2011
Anyone interested in trying out a new and improved search service should consider Lexalytics freemium offer. Available for download on their website is a trial version of their software, as explained in the article, Lexalytics, Inc. Offers No-Hassle Trial of Text Analytics Solution, on Musicsalls.
With more and more companies losing precious man-hours sorting through troves of useless data, a new industry of uber-search software has emerged. Every company has a different spin on how they extrapolate legitimate and useful data, and Lexalytics is no different. As explained in the article,
Lexalytics’ Text Analytics Trial supports the ability for users to gather up to 50 documents of various types, including html, word, PowerPoint, PDF and text. In addition, users may select from a list of full-text RSS feeds for analysis. The application processes these documents or feeds to extract pertinent metadata including people, places, and companies. It then applies tone and sentiment results to those entities.
For companies not quite ready to sign on the dotted line, this might be a good option. The free trial includes the same software capabilities offered to clients. They tout themselves as offering, “Tailored fit, off the rack ease, and designer results.” We admire the wording, and with sentiment analysis becoming more fashionable, we think you will want to take a closer look at the firm’s technology.
Text data mining is a field exploding in popularity and those fortunate enough (or smart enough) to get in at the beginning are hanging on for a wild and profitable ride. Since so many companies are providing basically the same service, new angles and spins are necessary to catch the consumer eye. Lexalytics’ freemium is a proven winner and wise choice.
We want to note the use of more aggressive marketing methods in the search and content processing sector.
Catherine Lamsfuss, September 7, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Must Attend Conference: Text Analytics Symposium
July 25, 2011
Analysis on another level
PRWeb.com has released information on the newest trend in business technology and marketing. Sentiment Analysis. In the press release “Sentiment Analysis Symposium to Spotlight Agency, Finance, Technology, and Social Media Thought Leaders, November 9,2011 in San Francisco,” we are able to gauge the excitement that is building behind this new approach to consumer marketing. The release asserted:
“Businesses are eager to extract and exploit consumer and market sentiment and opinion from the broad array of information sources online and in the enterprise,” said symposium chair Seth Grimes.
The conference is going to provide agency leaders with multiple solutions and networking opportunities. In its third year the conference boast participation from TripAdvisor, Saltlux, Acrolinx, and Amazon. The announcement added:
“They focus on online and social media measurement and analytics — on business intelligence for enterprise, Web, and social opinion sources — whether representing an enterprise-software leader or start-up, research firm, an online information provider, an agency, or a consultancy.”
The sentiment analysis approach to marketing, business and technology is becoming more and more prevalent. It promises to be an ‘area to watch’ and may explode into an industry to invest in somewhere in the near future.
We think the conference is a must attend affair. The US enterprise search conferences have been flapping and panting. The European conferences wobble around governance and content management. This conference is different. It has zing and substance.
Stephen E Arnold, July 25, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Kapow and Clarabridge: Sentiment and UK Elections
July 4, 2011
There’s a new duo in town. Kapow and Clarabridge created a buzz with their text and social media mining skills in the Election Buzz UK Project.
According to “Media Alert: Kapow Technologies using Clarabridge Text and Sentiment Analytics in Election Buzz UK Project,” political junkies can gather real-time election insights.
Using Kapow Technologies to gather real-time web data from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and the main political blog sites, in combination with Clarabridge for text analytics and sentiment analysis, political commentators and followers alike will be able to track the sentiment and real-time insights that come from the rich and diverse social media sites across the Web.
Clarabridge is a provider of sentiment and text analytics software which gives companies a “universal view of their customer feedback by transforming text-based customer feedback into valuable insight.”
Kapow Technologies provides companies access to public Web data, making it easy to integrate and migrate the data from its source. In fact, transformation of content is part of the Kapow capabilities.
So what’s this relationship mean?
Tech-savvy companies are sucking in a Twitter feed and turning the drivel and gems into actionable data. Political commentators and followers benefited here but surely the partnership will catch the eye of business intelligence vendors looking to improve marketing abilities, product offerings, and customer service. Sentiment, I believe, is the new black for fall 2011.
Philip West, July 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Hotel Ratings Get Sentimental
July 3, 2011
Viva Las Vegas! And if I’m “viva-ing” Las Vegas, I’d stay at the luxurious Bellagio. So why, when comparing the Bellagio to the like of Bally’s on TripAdvisor, did Bally’s have a higher score? It seems mind-boggling to me and made Lexalytics, who generated TripAdvisor’s online review scores, scratch there collective heads as well. In the Forbes article “Text Analytics Show Why Bellagio Underperforms Bally’s” Lexalytics went beyond the score and analyzed the actual text of the reviews to get some answers.
Jeff Catlin, Lexalytics CEO said that in the past “year or two he has seen a sharp rise in use of electronic sentiment monitoring in customer relationship management (CRM) and in travel and tourism.” When they applied their sentiment analytic tools to the Bellagio test case, they found the people simply expected more for their money and expected more from a 5-star hotel. Catlin went on to say that:
Through the simple application of sentiment analysis of publicly available information, we show that companies can make these comparisons with much higher reliability, at minimal incremental cost, and with an unprecedented ability to adjust categories on-the-fly, either based on these results, or to test out new hypotheses. In fact, using this technique, we can move beyond the limitations of traditional approaches by running additional analysis to discover new, previously unmeasured categories based on recurring themes within the data.
What an interesting use of the natural language process and I bet that companies who utilize sentiment analytics will see a competitive advantage because they can get beyond the consensus opinion get down to an individual level. It is all about getting personal and who knows, I just may have to rethink my Vegas accommodations next time.
Jennifer Wensink, July 3, 2011
Holiday freebie
Attensity Europe Wins Innovation Award
March 25, 2011
In a news release, “Attensity Wins IT Innovation Award“, Attensity announced that its European unit (Attensity Europe GmbH) received recognition from Initiative Mittelstand. This group is focused on the advancement of pioneering information technologies and the firms responsible for their production.
The product singled out was Attensity Analyze for German. The application mines and organizes data from a broad selection of sources including media outlets, telecommunication records, and social content. One use of the system is to identify upsides and downsides of products or a company’s marketing programs. Glückwünsche Attensity!
Micheal Cory, March 25, 2011
Sentiment Analysis, the New Search and Retrieval Tool
March 24, 2011
Computer World has a concept for us to ponder: “Sentiment Analysis Comes of Age.” Sentiment analysis has been around for some time, but with the rapid proliferation of up-to-date social media and semantic-software vendors that offer commentary and relevant components, its benefits are coming to the light. Sentiment analysis has many potential paybacks, including new data sources never before tapped. Many semantic platforms already analyze material from social networking sites.
“Sentiment analysis platforms use two main methodologies. One involves a statistical or model-based approach wherein the system learns to assess sentiment by analyzing large quantities of pre-scored material. The other method utilizes a large dictionary of pre-scored phrases.”
Computerworld discovers sentiment analysis the way a father realizes his 15 year old daughter is ageing quickly. Can sentiment analysis improve search and retrieval? We’re not sure, but it makes advertisers perceive an advantage in explaining why consumers dislike a product or brand.
We anticipate search vendors will pile into this market as well.
Whitney Grace, March 24, 2011
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