Last week, tens of thousands of tech junkies flocked to Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), eager to get their hands on the latest electronic gadgets, network with like-minded professionals, and maybe catch a glimpse of visiting celebrities. With so many savvy users in the same place, it’s no surprise that the event generated a massive Twitter buzz. We thought it would be interesting to let loose our VoxTrot Opinion technology on the CES-related tweetstream – here’s what we learned.

New TV and 3D technologies overwhelmingly garnered the most praise on Twitter, led by the Boxee Box, which directly links internet content to your TV, and four separate television manufacturers who launched 3D sets. The Boxee Box took top honors in the “Last Gadget Standing” competition for most exciting new gadget at CES (as judged by audience applause).

Mobile technology also got people at CES excited, making up 15% of relevant CES related tweets. This conversation was driven mostly by Google’s Nexus One, RCA Airnergy’s wireless charger and FLO TV’s mobile live TV player. There were far too many new gadgets to create a category for each of them, but rave reviews for all other consumer electronics at CES made up fully one fifth of tweets.

Not everyone was satisfied with what they saw at CES, however.

• Ten percent of people were less than impressed with the new technologies and exhibits they saw at CES. Some thought that 3D TVs and games were gimmicky, while others simply didn’t see anything that wow’ed them
• Another 13% thought that the atmosphere at CES was lacking, especially as compared to last year. This included seeing lower profile displays, fewer giveaways and fewer “booth babes”
• Finally, AT&T frustrated many iPhone users with spotty 3G and wireless coverage at the Las Vegas convention. The increasingly popular hashtag #attfail saw a lot of use as tech junkies lashed out at AT&T (13% of conversation)

With CES 2010 now a memory and a whole year of new technology ahead of us, we know that people will continue to tweet about their favorite (and least favorite) gadgets – and Crimson Hexagon will be right there to measure the conversation.

Tags: advertising, events, news, uh oh by dylan
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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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Ad Age Top 20 Blogger Jason Falls interviews our own Mike Troiano on Social Media Explorer. Great stuff, thanks, Jason!

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Tags: brand monitoring, company, events, marketing, social web by mike
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Amazon’s announcement this morning of the Kindle DX dominated tech news today.  The new version of the web commerce giant’s e-book reader features a larger screen than its predecessor, the Kindle 2, and a host of other improvements including improved support for PDF documents.  It also carries a whopping $489 price tag, which may prove an obstacle to Amazon’s plan to supplant physical textbooks in schools.

Reading TechCrunch’s post “What Does Twitter Think About the Kindle DX today?” I was inspired to do an analysis of a sample of 1500 or so of today’s Tweets using our Voxtrot Opinion technology.  After reading through a few pages of Tweets,  I set the system loose on the remainder with some interesting results:

Although the device itself is gathering huge amounts of attention, more than a third of the non-news Tweets are focused on the implications of the DX for the newspaper and textbook industries.  The DX’s 9.7 inch screen may be approaching a tipping point, where e-readers become a credible alternative for a much broader array of printed media than ever before.  Seeing the amount of buzz around the improved support for PDF,  I am further convinced that technologically at least, the e-reader has arrived.

Practically speaking, although the Kindle DX seems to be on everybody’s wish list, the $500 ask is a major sticking point for Tweeters.  Even with the economy showing signs of recovery (bottoming, crumbling at a slower rate, whatever) I wouldn’t be surprised to see retail DX sales struggle for some time.

That said, today’s announcment represents a huge moment for Amazon and another milestone in what looks to be a very bright future for e-readers.

Tags: events, measurement, news, opinosphere, product by edward
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The good folks over at 100 Interviews posted this video shot last month at SXSW — I shared some thoughts about Crimson Hexagon and our unique approach to finding meaning in social media.

They’ve also captured a terrific selection of internet personalities from Chris Brogan (whose Inbound Marketing Summit we’re speaking at later this month) and Gary Vaynerchuk. Check out the site to find bite-sized discussion on everything from SXSW impressions to the future of search.

Tags: events, social web by admin
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SXSW in Twitter conversations, March 2009

While it’s fashionable to decry the actual panels, there was some interesting conversation at this year’s SXSW that didn’t take place at the Salt Lick. The best formal panel I attended described the integrated marketing effort behind Electronic Arts’ Dead Space. EA overcame an internal bureaucracy to put together a content-driven marketing approach that included both an interactive web experience and a comic book illustrated by Ben Templesmith. EA incurred tremendous cost in content creation and orchestration with so many moving parts (and plot lines), but the user engagement more than paid off with over a million games sold in 2008.

A prevalent conference theme was that social is an undisputed growth area for traditional brands, as Monday’s Forrester report Social Media Playtime Is Over (account required) points out. Brands like Walmart and Pepsi were out in force at SXSW, capitalizing on the authenticity, reach, and mindshare that influential bloggers like 11 Moms and Chris Brogan bring to bear. While the dollar spend is still comparatively low, Forrester is counseling brands to move beyond the experimentation stage and develop management strategies for social in the long term.  The next step in social for the enterprise is to develop the listening capability and social marketing metrics that demonstrate how social efforts convert to consumer preference and purchases.

Tags: brand, events, social web by admin
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Interesting to see how the words used to describe the event changed as the recaps came in over the next  24 hours. In this version, the true social media star of the event, Henry the Boston terrier, gets a mention.

Tags: events by admin
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As part of Social Media Week, Crimson Hexagon sponsored a Social Media Breakfast on online branding. Here’s a quick recap:

• Brad McCormick talked about different ways Porter Novelli delivers brand and business insights from social media to B2C behemoths
• Shiv Singh of Razorfish gave us some meaningful ways to think about successful online branding (think: authenticity, transformation, freshness—for a better summary, check out Daniel Tunkelang’s post)
• Melanie Notkin wowed the crowd with the passion and energy she uses to build her one-aunt brand, Savvy Auntie

No social media event is complete without the attendees having the last word, so here’s this morning’s wordle of the Tweets with the hashtag #smbnyc4:

Tags: brand, events by admin
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100 Million viewers tuned in on Sunday evening to view a classic clash of the titans. They were treated to a record-setting interception by James Harrison, a heated 4^th quarter rally by both teams, and a flood of new commercials with animals. Priced at $3M per 30-second spot, NBC sold a record $206M in advertising for the big game. In this economy that kind of spending reminds me of Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary pass – go for broke! Who says traditional channels are dead?

Some advertisers, such as Pedigree, have embraced the multi-channel experience of today’s consumers coordinating campaigns across traditional and digital domains. But even for those that haven’t explicitly gone digital yet, many consumers are taking them there anyway. Thousands of viewers were already blogging and tweeting about the new flock of commercials before the Steelers finished their Dom Perignon. At Crimson Hexagon, we wanted to know who successfully made the leap from mainstream to digital buzz. A look at both beverages and foods shows that results were mixed.

Running with the Clydesdales

Online Buzz for Beverage Brands

Anheuser-Busch once again led the pack in buying eight spots (four for Bud and four for BudLight). Given its long history of Super Bowl advertising, it’s no wonder that the buzz for Bud actually started ahead of the game, and has risen to nearly eight times the pre-game level.

In the standing battle between Coke and Pepsi (each invested in three spots), Pepsi appears to have made the bigger splash. Pepsi more than doubled online buzz, bringing it even (and heading higher) than Coke, which has seen minimal lift over its already strong buzz presence.

But the real winner within the drinks category so far has been Sobe Life Water. In the first two days, Sobe’s one commercial (featuring cameos by NFL players dancing with lizards in a 3D variant on Swan Lake) netted them buzz roughly five times their pre-game level. As if NFL players in tutus weren’t enough, Sobe’s choice to make this ad 3D generated extra anticipatory buzz the entire week leading into the Super Bowl.

Running for the Border

Online Buzz for Food & Snack Brands

Now perhaps it was because Taco Bell ignored the rule about including animals, but I find it pretty surprising that their Speed Date commercial hasn’t noticeably moved the needle. Maybe the offline buzz simply moved too fast to be caught online… Or maybe Draft FCB will be rethinking its approach to digital this week.

In other junk food news… chips appear to be highly bloggable. Cheetos has seen five times more buzz than before the Super Bowl. But Doritos’ two commercials led the pack with a 10 times jump in online chatter. How’d they do it? Well, they tapped into both the traditional Power of Creative Crunch and the wisdom of their chip-eating crowd. Who could have predicted such success would come from actively engaging your customers?

Booth Review

All this leads to some tough questions for agencies and brand managers who participated in this year’s Super Ad Bowl. Brows are furrowed as they digest the results of their commercials and turn their eyes towards managing the ongoing campaigns.

For the majority of brands that saw a big boost in buzz, kudos are warranted. But now that consumers are talking, the questions become:

• What are they talking about? (Was it “funny”, “same as last year”, or “better than Apple’s 1984 commercial”?)
• Are the topics discussed consistent with our goals for the brand? (Are our brand attributes performing as expected? How’s our positive share of voice vs. our competitors?)
• Who was talking and in which channels? (Was it bloggers, or were tweets flying around like paper airplanes in front of a substitute teacher?)

For those left in the dust, the question is “Where’s the buzz”? Perhaps their target audience somehow hasn’t heard about this whole social media thing yet (I give Frosted Flakes a little more leeway on this than Taco Bell). Or perhaps there’s only so much buzz a brand can take – had Coke already reached an optimal amount of ongoing buzz?

For the few standing on the sidelines, the question is whether it was worth saving the $3M per spot. Did you miss a chance to Steel the show?

Tags: advertising, brand, brand monitoring, customer voice, events, marketing, measurement, social web by admin
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Came across Twitchboard on today’s ReadWriteWeb post on The Rise of Cloud Agents. Twitchboard goes after the problem many web users are encountering: Humans just don’t scale. You sign up for a bunch of online services (my toolbar is littered with them) and then you have to remember you have them, use them, and, in an ideal world, integrate them.

Services like Ping.fm do a terrific job helping you publish across multiple platforms, like updating your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn statuses all at once. But Twitchboard takes it a level further by automating the interactions of these social web services.

More from ReadWriteWeb:

Blogger Chris Arkenberg says Twitchboard is a part of the “emerging class of cloud agents.” These cloud agents, as he describes them, will help us sort and search the massive volumes of data we interact with regularly. He envisions that soon we’ll have many of these cloud agents, swarming around us, working on our behalf, helping to parse the data flowing in and providing us with the information that we need, separated from the noise.

The Apple app store not too long ago passed 300 million downloads, and yesterday we learned that even the lowly iFart is earning over $10,000 every day. The problem is not that there too few useful or amusing applications, but how to manage all the resulting data and their interactions. I, for one, welcome our new cloud agent overlords.

Tags: events, research, social web by admin
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