Twitter Sentiments: A Search Variant?
May 13, 2010
Quite a suggestive write up from DNA India called “Twitter Sentiments May Soon Replace Public Opinion Polls.” According to the write up, “combing Twitter for data can be as good a way of researching opinions as conducting an actual poll.” Instead of working through a traditional survey process with sampling, instrument drafting, and instrument testing, just tweet. The notion of searching through data sets for a nugget gets replaced with an instant answer. For me the key point in the write up was:
Noah Smith, assistant professor of language technologies and machine learning in the School of Computer Science, said that the findings suggest that analyzing the text found in streams of tweets could become a cheap, rapid means of gauging public opinion on at least some subjects. He, however, warned that tools for extracting public opinion from social media text are still crude and social media remain in their infancy, so the extent to which these methods could replace or supplement traditional polling is still unknown.
What is the make up of a Twitter message sample? Noise. That’s an understatement. Nevertheless, the idea is interesting and shows how “informazation” is becoming a significant method.
Stephen E Arnold, May 13, 2010
Freebie.
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