Our office here in Cambridge, MA is blessed with talent from all parts of the country.  As a result of our mixed geographical heritage, few topics are as hotly debated in the office this time of year as pro football and coffee chains.  After a recent debate on the latter topic in which every side claimed that ‘most people’ agreed with them, we decided to take a peek at the online conversation and see if our assumptions were reflected in reality.

Deciding to limit ourselves for the time-being to Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, we analyzed over 230,000 blog and forum posts from June 1 to yesterday in an attempt to settle the debate whether internet’s perceptions of these brands matched our own.   We analyzed content every day, but summarized the results as the conversation was fairly stable  over that time.  Dunkin’ Donuts, as a mainly regional player had about 10%  of the volume of its much larger peer.

As those who have grown up in the Northeast know, DD is much-beloved local institution and 14% of the conversation were  general exclamations of love.   Those who had moved away from the region and missed their local shop were especially passionate in their praise for the chain.    Matching our own experience in the office, a large number of people (17%) mentioned Dunkin’ as a regular fixture of their daily routine;  particularly for morning coffee runs.

A number of Dunkin’ customers weren’t as satisfied with the experience of grabbing their coffee – complaints about sloppy service emerged quickly as a theme.  However, the regional devotion to DD’s syrupy take on coffee far outweighed the complaints.   We knew about the coffee but in training our analysis algorithm we were surprised at the amount of love for DD’s low-cal flatbread sandwiches and praise for their taste / calorie ratio.

Not everyone was impressed by DD’s commitment to their health, with 18% complaining about the caloric content of their baked goods.

Starbucks managed to avoid major health complaints despite Starbucks’ fattening drinks, which owned the cravings of many posters.   Their regular coffee, on the other hand, did not feature nearly as prominently or as well, with a category of negative posts specifically about the coffee and only a scattered few posts in praise of it (we rolled these compliments into the ‘Other Positive’ category.)  Despite the lack of enthusiasm about the basic coffee, a significant slice of the conversation mentioned Starbucks as part of daily routine as well.   For us, its position less than a block away trumps any concerns for pleasing our taste buds during our caffeine fixes.

Commenters also complained somewhat about the price of Starbucks’ offerings, long a symbol of casual decadence, but perhaps not as much as we expected.  An equivalent number of people felt that Starbucks was ‘evil’ on account of their scale, competitiveness with local business, and homogeneity. (The company is addressing this)  Not exactly shocking for us, as the DD proponents usually bring up the Austin Powers reference at least once an argument.

These complaints were minor compared to the biggest surprise to come out of the analysis:  that such a large number of Starbucks customers are vocal and satisfied with the shops’ ambiance (Good Experience.)  We read a number of posts by students who appreciated Starbucks as a study space and stressed out moms who sought it as a daily sanctuary.  The Seattle-based company has long emphasized this component of their brand, and it appears that their attention to the details of everything from the furniture to the music continues to pay dividends.

We haven’t managed to settle any internal debates here with this analysis, and no money changed hands on the side bets, but at least next time we’ll have proper statistics to hurl at one another.  Or possibly just stick to debating whether the Vikings are overrated.

Tags: brand, brand monitoring, data, research by edward
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Inglorious Basterds won at the box office and dominated Twitter conversations this weekend.  In addition to grossing nearly $37 million, Quentin Tarantino’s World War II-themed saga has been afixed to Twitter’s trending topics list since Friday.

Word of mouth referrals are nothing new to the movie business.  But, as Simon Dumenco (@simondumenco) points out in Friday’s AdAge, Twitter brings an element of speed and reach that is entirely new – and, he argues – potentially threatening to Hollywood.  To better understand Twitter content about new releases, Dumenco speculates that “…someday soon, someone’s going to get a PhD in the statistical parsing of Twitter data streams…”

Well, Mr. Dumenco, let us humbly assert that someday is today.  Crimson Hexagon turned its algorithm (created by a Harvard PhD professor) loose on this weekend’s Twitter conversation about Inglorious Basterds.

We performed the PhD magic on a sample of over 4500 Tweets from this weekend and found that:

• 40% of all Tweets on Inglorious praised the film, with an additional 9% hailing it as classic Tarantino
• Anticipation was still high, with almost a quarter of all Twitters talking about the movie still eager to see it
• The critics? Quiet so far, with only 8% of Tweets expressing disappointment at Tarantino or the film
• Finally, 14% want to know others’ opinions about the movie: Glad we could help

Tags: advertising, data, events, measurement by Megan Costello
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Boatloads of Twitter chatter on Google’s launch of the Chrome OS… Curious how it all breaks down?

We were too:

It’s probably fair to assume some pro-Google bias in the Twittersphere, but those expressing an opinion were more strongly in the ‘Unimpressed’ / ‘No Threat’ camp (at a combined 44% of the postings) than the ‘Excited’ / ‘Threat’ camp (at 35% combined.)

We’re inclined to agree with the 15% expressing some variant of ‘The OS War has begun.’

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Tags: brand monitoring, data, opinosphere, social web by mike
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Comprehensive piece here, our segment begins at 2:30…

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Tags: data, opinosphere, product, social web by mike
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Sweeping condemnation of Proposition 8 among the Twitterverse…

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Tags: company, data, opinosphere, social web by mike
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The Kindle series is among the first consumer uses of a revolutionary display technology called ‘E-ink’.  E-ink displays are more akin to digital watch style LCDs than the TV variety, featuring low-powered, uncolored displays that are reputed to be easy to read for long stretches in contrast to computer monitors.

The Kindle 2 succeeded the late 2007 original and Amazon says they used the time to improve the layout, increase the responsiveness, and improve the resolution.  Until recently, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.  TechCrunch reported recently that the Amazon has sold their 300,000th unit of the Kindle 2 in only 50 days post-release, making the series by far the best-selling of its type.  Until earlier this month, the public’s verdict on the Kindle’s no-frills display could be summed up with the phrase: “Easy on the eyes.”

Then Wired.com published an article on April 13 titled, “Kindle 2’s Fuzzy Fonts Have Users Seeing Red.”   Quoting a “user from the Pennsylvania”, the article asserts that the text-display algorithms of the Kindle 2 “Do not take into account the human psychology of perception.”   Although the article spares a paragraph to quote Amazon’s side of the story – users like the display – it continues on to offers home-remedies in advance of the “easy fixes that Amazon can make.”

The widely-linked article certainly had an impact on the online conversation.   The proportion of online conversation on the display characterizing it as ‘hard to read’ more than doubled in the following days – from 13% on 4-12 to more than 30% at its peak.

Author Priya Ganapati’s insinuation that the font display is a widely-perceived problem is somewhat curious given that she herself described the Kindle 2 as “easy on the eyes” in an earlier Wired article.   Whatever the reason, the post’s impact has waned two weeks on, appearing to spare Amazon’s product from any lasting damage to its reputation.  Still, when you’re slinging 6,000 units a day at $360 each, the effects of even a temporary shift in online conversation can be expensive.   The lost revenue from even a 1% drop in sales for a fortnight is enough justificatino for an active social media monitoring and engagement program.  Amazon, while by no means the kind of PR horror story we’ve delighted in this year, would do well to remember the occasionally high cost of the digital word.

Tags: company, customer voice, data, measurement, product by edward
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The Guardian today announced its new Open Platform, and influential technology bloggers and analysts took notice. The Guardian is providing content and data APIs to enable and encourage developers to build third-party apps. Developers can monetize their creations with advertising, but will eventually be required to join an ad network.

As anyone who has picked up a local newspaper lately can attest, the death of print media is not greatly exaggerated, but a grim fact.  The Guardian seems committed to the kind of innovation that may help it to weather the storm.

From our perspective, it’s pretty amazing to see the much-heralded age of big and open data becoming a reality. Open access to news and data sets is sure to open the floodgates for insights from new methods of quantifying and visualizing reporting.

Tags: data, news, research by admin
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