We’ve been keeping an eye on reactions to the recent State of the Union address, and the potential repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) remains a hot topic.  Over the next few months, we’ll be using our technology to track what people are saying about DADT on blogs and forums as this story develops.

Right now, a full three quarters of people support the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, over half of whom constitute a general anti-DADT movement. Comparisons to the debates surrounding integration of women and African Americans into the military are common.

Some people (11%) feel that Republicans opposed to the repeal, like John McCain and Duncan Hunter, Jr., are unreasonable, and that the entire controversy is reflecting poorly on the GOP.

Others are frustrated by the speed or degree of change.  Some 15% of the conversation expresses disappointment that even after Obama and top Pentagon officials spoke out in favor of repeal, the policy is being seriously studied for at least another year instead of being overturned immediately.  Others (8%) remind us that the repeal of DADT would be only a small step in the battle for gay rights, and that there are more important injustices to worry about.

About 14% of people oppose the repeal, citing possible complications including effects on troop cohesion.  A number of people (10%) fall in between the two extreme views, expressing either their indecision about the issue or their support for a third, intermediate option.

We’re looking forward to watching trends in this conversation as things progress, and we’ll keep you updated about any interesting changes we see.

Tags: uncategorized by janet
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While not owning a car is often frustrating, at times it has its advantages in Boston: no digging snow out from around tires, no fighting crowds for parking, and I don’t have to worry about the sticky accelerator pedal in my Toyota sending me to a fiery death. The recent Toyota recall has caused quite the international stir and, while no one in the office owns one, we couldn’t help but wonder what people on Twitter thought. Here’s what we found:

Not surprisingly, people think this is bad for Toyota. Just over a quarter of the tweets about the Toyota recall believe this will damage Toyota’s previously well-respected brand reputation.

Some 22% of the conversation speculated on how the recall would benefit Toyota’s competitors, especially those backed by the American government. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s comment that owners should “stop driving it and take it to a Toyota dealer” fueled theories that the government was looking to boost its investments in GM.

Twitterers dissatisfied with the Toyota response to the crisis thought the company moved too slowly and was wrong to send potential replacement accelerators to assembly plants to build new cars rather than dealerships to repair cars already on the road. The knowledge that Toyotas sometimes cannot be stopped by their drivers left others scared to drive in or around them.

Twitter is usually good for funny one-liners and Toyota’s tag line “Moving Forward” ensured that it failed to disappoint. These snarky tweets, joined by The Daily Show’s coverage of the “Toyotathon of Death” continue to add to Toyota’s collective embarrassment.

Tweets about the recall weren’t all bad for Toyota, as 12% were by Toyota drivers who pledged to remain loyal to the company. It’s great that they love their cars, but for now, I’m happy to keep riding the subway and avoid them on the road.

Tags: uncategorized by dylan
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It’s fair to say we were pleased when CNN aired our analysis of Twitter’s reaction to the State of the Union address.

We were thrilled when the Huffington Post quoted CNN SVP David Bohrman as saying, “This is light-years beyond what we’ve done”

So imagine our delight when Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show picked up the story in last night’s show.  (See 2:15)

Well, sort of.  He may have in fact said, “I’ve never seen a situation where more information helped me understand less.”

Ouch.

But hey, it was 75 seconds of a pretty packed 22 minutes, maybe people forgot about it? We turned to Twitter (of course) to find out.

Based on Tweets from today, Stewart’s (4 minutes long) take on Chris Matthews’s momentary venture into 1932 was the star of show, with 32% of total praise. In contrast, Stewart’s segment on our analysis barely drew more attention than Doris Kearns’s interview (5 min) with a scant 12%. That’s just a fraction of the total humor produced on that show.

Of course, per second of screen time, Stewart’s Twitter rant generated 28% more praise than his comments on Matthews and 451% more than his interview with Kearns. So maybe it was funny, after all.  What was that again about having more information?

Tags: uncategorized by edward
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Last night, Crimson Hexagon’s analysis of over 200,000 tweets pertaining to the State of the Union Address was featured on CNN’s post-speech coverage. Broken down state by state, our technology helped John King and Wolf Blitzer report in real-time what people on Twitter thought of President Obama’s speech. We are very excited about our new relationship with CNN and hope to be making more appearances on the ‘magic wall’ in the near future!

Tags: uncategorized by dylan
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Today, Boulder, Colorado-based social media agency Room 214 announced that they chose Crimson Hexagon as a key strategic partner to provide next generation opinion analysis and monitoring to extend their social media research and business intelligence offerings.

Room 214 has been creating interpretive analyses of user generated content and aggregated online data since 2006. They remain tool-agnostic and are leveraging our monitoring platform to help large brands better distill opinions and meaning from social networking properties and online conversations.

The social media agency was one of two early enterprise agency partners we began working with in 2009.  Their insightful product feedback, deep understanding of our platform, and analyst resources make them an ideal partner to deliver and extend the value of our software.

Room 214 co-founder James Clark feels, “In stark contrast to straight up sentiment analysis, Crimson Hexagon data provides the intelligence to drill deeper into relevant opinions in the online conversation to better align marketing strategies and initiatives that incorporate the voice of the customer.”

In fact, one of the key reasons Room 214 chose Crimson Hexagon was that our opinion monitors go far beyond automated sentiment, which in their words is unreliable and only provides a breakdown of positive, negative or neutral conversations.

We are excited about this relationship and the great potential it has going forward.  As strategic partners, we are working closely together on product feedback, training, joint marketing and selling initiatives.

Tags: uncategorized by dylan
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Here in Cambridge, MA, every other TV commercial for the last two weeks has been a senate campaign spot. Yesterday, Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election after taking full advantage of social media campaign tools. Now that the dust from the election has settled, we decided to take a look at the online conversation about the election and see if claims that Brown’s campaign dominated the social media arena were true. This is what we found:

Tweets On Election Day

Yes, social media strongly favored Scott Brown.

-          41% of tweets specifically favored Brown, referencing votes, time and money given to him.

-          An additional 9% were anti-Coakley for her political views and poorly run campaign

-          A further 21% were conservatives happy that stopping Coakley meant hamstringing the Obama agenda in the senate as well (mostly focused on health care and carbon cap and trade)

-          Even the 16% of tweets that were anti-Brown focused mostly on him being too liberal

The lonely few pro-Coakley Twitterers managed to capture 9% of the overall conversation flow and their candidate took 47% at the polls.

Blogs And Forums Throughout The Campaign

Analysis of conversations on blogs and forums showed similar results to the Twittersphere of pro-Brown, anti-Coakley, and anti-Obama sentiment over the course of the campaign, though Coakley’s support was twice that of what it was in Twitter. With access to more than 140 characters at a time, bloggers and forum-dwellers tend to express many opinions over the course of one post, so our categories were a little broader to reflect this (it turns out people who disliked Coakley tended to also think that Scott Brown is great.)

Monitoring over time revealed a brief bump in the conversation focused on stopping Obama’s agenda on 1/8. On that day, Scott Brown appeared on Sean Hannity’s show, bringing a more national, conservative audience to the Massachusetts race. Over the rest of the race, the sentiment held steadily.

Tags: uncategorized by dylan
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In the war that is apparently the norm in soft drink pricing, negotiations are usually held behind closed doors. But on November 17th the doors were blown open as Costco refused to restock Coca-Cola products because they failed to offer “competitive pricing.” When a similar pricing dispute occurred in February between Delhaize, a supermarket chain, and Unilever brands, Delhaize lost 31% of its customers, while Unilever lost 47% of Delhaize shoppers.

So does anyone win these disputes? We decided to turn our VoxTrot monitor’s attention to the online conversation surrounding the Costco/Coke dispute to see what the Twitterverse thought.

The Twitter users who chose a side in the dispute were closely split, with 11% supporting Costco and 14% for Coke. Many Costco supporters saw them as a champion of the consumer, while supporters of Coke said they shouldn’t back down from corporate bullying. One in five mentions were just plain sad about the situation, trying to figure out where they would now purchase their pallets of Diet Coke.

Not all Tweets were concerned. Some were incredulous about the lack of Coke products in Costco, as 18% thought that the whole public dispute was crazy or astonishing and 12% cracked jokes about it. The rest of the conversation was pessimistic about the clash, with 15% ready to dismiss it as simply two corporate giants battling over a few cents per can and the last 10% remarking that competitors to Coke (Pepsi) and Costco (Walmart) were going to benefit.

So who is winning? Perhaps the question should be: is anyone winning? For the few who take a side, the sentiment is even, but most everyone else is sad, disdainful, amused or betting on the competitors, none of which seem positive for either company. As far as the Twitterverse goes, it appears that everyone is losing, including the consumer.

Tags: uncategorized by dylan
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Twitter has now become the communication channel of choice for many celebs to make announcements.  The Twitterverse was a buzz yesterday with news of Paula Abdul leaving American Idol.  Of course with the hundrreds of buzz tools out there we could have learned of the spike in Tweets or the general sentiment of the Twitterverse.  But we unleashed our VoxTrot technology to dive into what the real opinions were of the “event”.  Overall, many were sad, even “distraught” to see her go, with 44% of those expressing opinions saying that they were disappointed and some refusing to even watch the show anymore.  The Kirstie Alley announcement and Kara’s role created speculation about new and replacement judges.  And 20% just saw the event as a joke, referring to Paula’s sometimes strange behavior as a highlight of the show.  Even Bill Clinton’s role to free the American journalists was considered as an option to return Paula to Idol.

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Tags: uncategorized by Melyssa
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Courtesy our friends over at CNN.com

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Tags: uncategorized by mike
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Hyundai’s been making a big splash recently.  This summer it become the world’s 5th largest automaker. Early this month, the company announced the innovative sales promotion of allowing buyers to return their cars if they lose their jobs. And this week, Consumer reports crowned Hyundai’s new entrant into the upscale sedan segment, the Genesis,  as their top rated luxury car.

The engineering achievement alone, taking out Toyota’s Lexus as CR’s choice for a lux-ride,  is worthy of some major bragging by Hyundai. Somehow, the company’s neglected to mention it on either their blog or Twitter feed.

The reason? They have neither.

Hyundai’s brand could certainly use the help from social media.  The Korean manufacturer, previously known for its low-cost sedans, is trying to break into the crowded upscale market at a difficult time.   Its competitors have established separate high-end marks with differentiated brands;  Toyota has Lexus, Honda/Acura,  VW/Audi,  Ford/Lincoln (sort of), etc.  Shunning convention, and the associated costs of establishing a new brand, Hyundai has launched the acclaimed Genesis under its own name. However, Hyundai’s core brand attribute of value for money may put it at disadvantage against BMW’s performance image or Audi’s aura of refinement.

To convince potential customers that the $36k Genesis is every bit as good as its $45K+ rivals, the company will need more than great reviews and an upcoming Superbowl commercial.  Hyundai needs to persuade the public to think of the brand in an entirely new light and manage complex messaging of its luxury vs lower-end products.

Rivals have already established themselves in the social media space.  GM has managed its FastLane blog since 2005, with peeks at product development and features from executives.  Toyota has been using its Twitter feed to direct users to its blog and combat rumors that it failed to donate to post-9/11 charities.  Ford was recently dubbed the ‘Anti-Motrin’ for its effectiveness in utilizing social media to diffuse backlash from legal action against a fan site.

To be sure, Hyundai’s not the last one in the pool.  Notably, Honda and Mercedes don’t maintain an official (English-language) social media presence.  Eventually they’ll get there, but in the meantime they have an established upmarket brand that Hyundai lacks or, in Honda’s case, a rabid community of enthusiasts.  Hyundai will need to build and maintain its grassroots network of  evangelists if its going to reap the full benefits of its new ‘halo car.’  A Genesis widget, published back in October, is a positive first step but only underscores the long road to real commitment to the medium.

Hyundai’s newest car has shown it now has the engineering skills and marketing muscle to rattle the established players; it’s time for it to develop the social-media savvy needed to supercharge its brand.

Photo credit: jiazi

Tags: brand, social web, uncategorized by edward
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