Sometimes finding the answer means going beyond the question.

Yesterday marked our debut on CNN.com, and we were understandably jacked by the whole experience. The topic happened to be twitter reactions to the American Idol finale – a long way from our United Nations trouble-spot identification days – but an interesting topic nonetheless.

What emerged from the data was a slight edge for Adam Lambert over Kris Allen, meaning our “prediction” would have lined up with everyone else’s.

But something else emerged from the data… namely that 3% of the Twitter conversation was vehemently ANTI-Adam, while Kris had no such negatives. Adding Adam negatives to Kris’ positives put Kris over the top – something we saw given the nature of our technology, but no one else did.

The only way to understand what the online conversation really means is to move beyond first generation keyword analysis. That’s exactly what we do, and at the risk of boastfulness, our “big time” premiere proved to be a powerful demonstration of that fact.

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