Positive Social Media Opinion Increases from Opening Weekend to Second Weekend in Theaters

When one of the year’s most anticipated films, The Great Gatsby, opened on May 10th, it was met with mixed critical reviews. News stories reported that some viewers were delighted with Baz Luhrmann’s remake, while others were bitterly disappointed this interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic American story.

While many news stories discussed these polarized opinions about the film, we were interested in how movie-goers expressed their opinions on social media, spreading the word — good or bad — about the film to their social networks. Using ForSight, we identified more than 1.3 million tweets about The Great Gatsby from May 9 – 19 and analyzed what was driving viewers’ opinions about the film. We found that the majority of movie-goers talking about The Great Gatsby on Twitter expressed glowing reviews, which increased from the first to the second weekend the movie appeared in theaters.

The day before the premiere, 87% of the social buzz on Twitter (after excluding neutral mentions, e.g. “I’m watching The Great Gatsby”) was focused on excitement about the film. In fact, 62% of the conversation expressed the explicit desire to see the film. Criticisms before the opening of the film only represents 13% of the conversation.

On opening day, negative opinion only accounts for 25% of the total conversation. The remaining 75% of the conversation is dominated by praise for the film, its actors, and the soundtrack, as well as a continued desire to see the movie.

Many turn to Twitter to describe Leonardo DiCaprio’s role as Gatsby himself as the highlight of the film (12% on opening day). Some even stated that, although they were not fans of the movie overall, they enjoyed the actor’s take on the illustrious character.

ForSight’s evaluation also noted that the film’s music proved an engaging topic of discussion on Twitter. The soundtrack was widely debated due to the apparent contradiction between the movie’s Roaring Twenties setting and songs covered solely by contemporary artists. Many cited the soundtrack as a draw to the film, focusing especially on songs by Lana Del Ray, Florence & the Machine, Beyonce and Jay-Z.

Despite criticism the film has received, positive opinion continues to reign over the negative and even shows some growth throughout the week following the movie’s release.

ForSight’s social media analysis indicated that, though word of disappointment and dissatisfaction circulates in critical reviews and media coverage of the movie, most people who turn to Twitter to express their views on the movie voice satisfaction and enthusiasm for Luhrmann’s imaginative book-turned-movie.

Have you seen The Great Gatsby? Did you tweet your reviews of the film from the theater? Let us know if your opinion aligns with aggregate opinion by tweeting @crimsonhexagon.

Crimson Hexagon analysed social media conversations to gauge public reaction to the announcement that Manchester United, David Beckham is to retire from football at the end of the season, and has discovered that 51 per cent of the conversation consisted of sharing news content. In online conversations, more people discussed #Beckham’s haircuts than expressed disappointment about his retirement. MORE

Daily Research News Online discusses Crimson Hexagon’s newest feature, Live Stream, that enables real-time social media monitoring through our ForSight™ platform providing a real-time view of how engaged online consumers think and feel about brands or issues. MORE

by Tom Whitney

Tom Whitney (@tw9449) is UK pre-sales manager at Crimson Hexagon. He has over eight years of experience as a marketer and pre-sales consultant with data analytics, campaign management, and social media software.

IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group), the UK’s industry group for online retail, asked me to share insights about how retailers can best utilize social media market research and realize value from social media channels. I wanted to share my thoughts on the unique capacity of social media analytics to provide retailers with wider context about their consumers and their market.

Retailers are steadily coming to grips with how they, their brand, and their products, fit into today’s social world.  Most are using social media to broadcast themselves: to attain a promotional presence in customers’ day-to-day lives, driving awareness of benefits and value.  Others are more interactive through the channel: fostering a truly interactive community to respond to questions or feedback, and focus on customer service and engagement.

Now, all this activity allows retailers, indeed any business, to become closer to their customer communities than ever before, but it’s missing something.  Something really important. What about those people who engage with your brand, stores and products but are not connected to you on social networks? By sticking to community management, no matter how successful, you are neglecting the bigger picture: the context in which your company is trying to do business.

Social media listening has been around for a while, and has generally referred to simply checking up on Buzz or Share of Voice. The assumption is that the more people are talking about your brand, the better.  But what about negative sentiment?  For example, if a retailer gets into trouble because of bad financial results, a poorly received advertising campaign, or a supply-chain issue, their share of voice will be huge, as the world reacts, but this isn’t a good thing.

The aim should be to dig more deeply into social media.   With the right approach, it’s possible to go beyond share of voice, and even positive and negative sentiment, to actually pinpoint topics of conversation, and drivers of sentiment.

Try to understand the true context behind the conversations and opinions happening out there, and gain insights that are useful and actionable within your organisation. Traditionally, this would be done through small samples: snapshots onto the world through focus groups of selected customers, or hand-coded samples of social media comments.

Now, though, technology has developed to allow the scaling-up of this insight.  With the right tool, retailers can ask specific questions:

• “What do people think of our product lines?”
• “How does perception of our online ecommerce channel differ from stores?”
• “What impact did the recent advertising campaign have upon the market?”

By asking such questions through social insight tools, thousands, or even millions, of unsolicited responses can be found.  From these, patterns and insights can be identified, and then, importantly, these insights can fundamentally affect and inform your business and marketing strategy. Retailers using Crimson Hexagon, one of the tools which enables this, use such context to alter ad campaigns based on reactions to previous ones, stock alternative products following trends, learn the best strategy for developing a social-commerce channel, even focus rebranding or repositioning projects around the social conversation.

So, when it comes to social media, use it as the world’s largest focus group.  Look wider than your own customers, your own Facebook page and Twitter feed… Get a handle on the wider context for your company in the world.

Crimson Hexagon Introduces Live Stream for
Real-Time Social Media Monitoring

New Capability Expands Crimson Hexagon’s ForSight™ Platform with
Live Post Lists, Maps, Volume Graphs and Alerts

BOSTON – May 15, 2013 – Crimson Hexagon (http://www.crimsonhexagon.com), a leading provider of social media analytics software, announced the availability of Live Stream, a new feature added to its ForSight™ platform that enables real-time social media monitoring. Live Stream provides users with live post lists and maps registering the author’s location and Klout influence score, while providing additional perspective on the evolving conversation with 24-hour volume graphs. An example of Crimson Hexagon’s new Live Stream capabilities can be viewed here (http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/live-stream-for-real-time-social-media-monitoring/).

Complementing the new Live Stream, Crimson Hexagon also released customizable email alerts triggered by events on social media, such as sudden changes in volume of posts on a topic. Notably, the new alerts notify social media analysts and brand managers on changes in relevant volume or changes in volume of particular topics of conversation about a brand, product, or service, which unites real-time social media monitoring with Crimson Hexagon’s patented BrightView™ algorithm-powered opinion analysis.

“As social media conversations can change instantaneously, it is important for brands and businesses to employ monitoring solutions that focus on conversations happening right now, as well as in-depth analysis over time,” said Crimson Hexagon President, Curt Bloom. “Crimson Hexagon’s new Live Stream feature allows users to monitor social conversations in real-time to help them quickly gauge the success of their campaigns and strategies. We see this new tool as a great compliment to our deep analytical capabilities that today’s key business driving questions necessitate.”

In addition to the full Twitter Firehose, Crimson Hexagon collects and archives many other global social media content sources. This depth and breadth of content allows Crimson Hexagon’s global customer base to not only analyze a comprehensive set of current social media data, but also compare available data and results going back to 2008, providing powerful historical consumer insights to aid in strategic business decision making.

Ideal for partnerships with companies who are expanding globally, Crimson Hexagon’s patented BrightView analysis algorithm — the power behind its ForSight platform — is language agnostic and can perform social media analysis equally well in any language. Customers can easily leverage Crimson Hexagon’s global content sources and language-independent analysis capabilities without additional complex set up processes.

About Crimson Hexagon, Inc.

Crimson Hexagon, founded in 2007, is the leading provider of analysis software that delivers business intelligence from social media data for global corporations. Fast Company named Crimson Hexagon one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies on the Web. Powered by patented technology developed at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Crimson Hexagon ForSight™ platform delivers the industry’s most comprehensive Big Data analysis capabilities for a variety of large-scale data sources. Clients include leading global organizations such as: Microsoft, Paramount Pictures, Starbucks, Simon & Schuster, Twitter, The United Nations, and many more. For more information go to: http://www.crimsonhexagon.com or read the Crimson Hexagon Social Media Monitoring and Analysis blog: http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/blog/.

Lauren Mecca is a marketing analyst with Crimson Hexagon. Lauren is interested in start ups, customer service, local food, real estate, and the arts.

Carnival Cruise Lines: Trouble in Paradise?

A brand can better shape its response and prepare for financial implications associated with a brand crisis with a comprehensive understanding of its public perception over time. But there are often broader consequences to be considered, and the wealth of social media data published each day offers a multitude of opportunities to measure and strategically respond to these impacts.

ForSight’s social media analysis platform allows brands to easily visualize and follow shifts in sentiment caused by high-profile accidents such as the fire on board the Carnival Triumph in February of 2013. While the cruise ship drifted without electricity through the Gulf of Mexico, consumers and onlookers shared a variety of reactions online in a conversation that totaled 82,000 Twitter posts in one week:

From Carnival management’s standpoint, this conversation might not look so bad. It certainly could be worse: only 1% express an intent to disengage with Carnival over the incident. Most of the criticism was directed at Carnival in a joking form (8%), often associating Carnival with other institutions whose reputations are suffering:

Most emphasis is placed on the passengers’ well being (40%), and many were shocked by the conditions described on board (26%). A finding that would be comforting to Carnival is the extent of praise for the brand’s response to the crisis, which made up a sizeable 24% of the conversation. Appreciation for Carnival’s reaction outweighed denunciation (1%), indicating a PR response worthy of praise.

The Effects of Crisis on Brand Perception

With a more comprehensive look at the social media activity surrounding Carnival’s brand, we learn that over the past year, conversation about Carnival Cruises sways negative (57%):

Specific drivers of negative opinions range from impressions that Carnival cruises are tacky and low quality (26%) to claims that Carnival cruises are unsafe and unsanitary (31%). On the positive side (45%), people tend to turn to Twitter with general excitement about a particular Carnival cruise (18%).
With ForSight’s social media analysis platform, Carnival and its competitors can not only gauge the health of their own brands but sentiment towards the cruise industry as a whole. Studying the same conversation trends at the broader industry level can help brands gauge strengths and weaknesses relative to a useful benchmark.

Industry Analysis

The cruise industry conversation uncannily aligns with Carnival’s:

One fascinating difference occurs the week of February 10, when the Carnival Triumph had the fire. The cruise industry actually suffers from a significantly larger spike in negative opinions:

While it is still too soon to know the financial damage done to both the brand and the industry, there is a clear case for following these data closely as Carnival and other members of the industry try to stay afloat through rough waters.

by Professor Gary King

Gary King is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University, Harvard’s most distinguished faculty position. He also serves as Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has won “MORE” than 30 “best of” awards for his articles, books, conference papers, and software, among others.

The explosive rise of social media in the last decade represents an unprecedented increase in the expressive capacity of the human race. Billions of people now have the ability to post an idea on the Web that billions of others can read, and billions now do post. However, since everyone is speaking at the same time, very few individuals wind up being heard.  What we need is more than a way to hear what any one person is saying or a search to find the needle in the haystack — but rather a way to hear what everyone is saying, to characterize the haystack, to understand the word on the street and the wisdom in the crowd.  This is where Crimson Hexagon aims and its unique technology excels: It gives voice to the people about every product, ad campaign, service, policy, candidate, government, action, event, and movement — in a way that can be heard and understood by anyone who wants to know.

Since we are in the unusual position of being able to hear what so many have to say, it should be no surprise that we are also keenly interested in the forces in the world attempting to stop anyone from hearing what others have to say.  Among these, the Chinese government looms large.  They control the most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever implemented.

So what is the Chinese government after?

What is the point of this program?  What do censorship practices indicate about the intentions and priorities of the Chinese government? These are the questions that my coauthors, Jennifer Pan and Molly Roberts, and I examine in our recent article, just published in the May 2013 issue of the American Political Science Review.   To answer these questions, we conducted the first large scale analysis of this enormous secretive program.  We downloaded millions of social media posts before the Chinese government could read and censor those they deemed inappropriate, and we then (carefully) went back to each post to see if it was censored.  We then applied Crimson Hexagon technology, and new analytical methods we developed here, to all these Chinese language posts.  We used this analysis to understand how the content of the censored posts — which the Chinese people were prevented from reading but which we had — differed from those that were not censored.

What most everyone thought previously was that the Chinese government was censoring criticism of its government, leaders, and policies.  This seemed obvious, the presumed result being that the remaining posts were more positive about the state.  But as we learned, this received wisdom was completely wrong: Chinese social media includes millions of criticisms, including many vitriolic, of the Chinese state, the people who run it, and what they do.  Those posts are not more likely to be censored than those which applaud the state and its leaders.

So if they were not pruning social media to make themselves look better, why do they have tens of thousands of people reading and censoring individual social media posts?

It turns that the Chinese leadership lets criticism through, censors all expressions that display, or are perceived to display, “collective action potential” — any attempt to spur collective action, whether opposed to, in support of, or irrelevant to the state.  Want to write a social media post that explains that the leaders of your town are slimes, stealing money, and incompetent?  No problem.  But if you also say that we should all go protest as a result, you’ll be censored.  Indeed, if instead you say that the leaders are terrific people with terrific policies, and we should go have a big party for them, you’ll be censored.  Any attempt to direct the movement of people, protest, or other collectivity will be clipped in the bud and removed from the Internet.

The Chinese censorship apparatus is huge but, like a giant elephant tiptoeing around trying to suppress information, it leaves big footprints.  Because we were the first to obtain an aerial viewpoint of their entire program, we could see the footprints.  This meant that in addition to understanding what they censor, we could also clearly see government intention to act outside the Internet ahead of time.  For example, several days in advance we could see that they were about to arrest a dissident, sign a peace treaty, or demote a political leader.

The results of our research would seem to provide critical and unique information for academic researchers, public policy professionals, government actors, and area experts on the coordinated actions of the Chinese government.  Many are following up.

As a founder and chairman of the board of Crimson Hexagon, and also a professor at Harvard, it is gratifying to see how often the sometimes divergent goals of academic researchers and industry experts can come together to produce new data, novel statistical methods, and genuine knowledge about the world that could never have emerged from work solely within a university or within any single company.  The synergies that result from working together to cross these borders are fun to see and productive to be part of.

UK Telegraph sport’s writer Thom Gibbs writes about live reaction to the managerial appointment of David Moyes to UK’s largest Football Club, the Manchester United, and the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson. Within the article, Crimson Hexagon’s Forsight™ platform is mentioned to have analysed 457,586 relevant Twitter and Facebook posts discussing Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure and Moyes as his replacement. MORE…

Social media conversation can change in an instant. Brand managers and social media analysts know that they must monitor what is happening now regarding their brands, products, and services on social media.

This week, we released the Live Stream capability to complement historical opinion analysis. The Live Stream features three main components: a running post list, live map, and hourly volume graph.

The post list displays posts and tweets that you want to monitor and measure with your keywords.  When a post populates the list, the live map registers where the post originates and indicates, with size of the “splash” on the screen, the relative influence of the author, based on the author’s Klout score. The volume graph indicates the volume of posts matching your keywords over the past 24 hours, putting the live stream of posts into perspective of the past day.

The Live Stream of Hulu, the online television and video streaming service, shows the pattern of engagement with Hulu on Twitter over a 24-hour time frame. Unsurprisingly, tweets about Hulu increase in the evening viewing hours. Perhaps surprisingly, on May 8, conversation about Hulu increases to prime-time viewing levels at noon on the East Coast. Is Hulu sufficiently reaching out to their lunchtime viewing and tweeting crowd?

The Post List captured at the end of the lunch hour on the East Coast shows some of lunchtime chatter about Hulu, about what people are watching now or look forward to watching later. The map shows where the authors displayed in the Live Stream post list are located. At this hour, the Rocky Mountain region does not have many posts about Hulu, whereas there are posts coming from the coasts and Midwest.

Live Stream premiered this week, and we’re excited to hear stories from users about how the Live Stream supports their social media monitoring and reporting. Please share your stories @crimsonhexagon, and, as always, be in touch if you have questions or suggestions as we continue to enhance ForSight’s monitoring and analytic capacities.

Crimson Hexagon and MicroTech Partnership Brings In-Depth Social Media Analysis Capabilities to the Government Market

MicroTech Identifies Actionable Insight for Customers, Expands Knowledge Environment with Crimson Hexagon’s Technology

BOSTON – May 7, 2013 – Crimson Hexagon, a leading provider of social media analytics software, announced today a new partnership with MicroTech, a leading services provider and technology integrator. Through the implementation of Crimson Hexagon’s ForSight™ platform, MicroTech will be able to provide clients with social data and knowledge management, influencing policy and other key decisions.

“We are thrilled to work with MicroTech and break into the federal sector,” said Crimson Hexagon President, Curt Bloom. “Through this partnership we will be able to assist MicroTech in delivering analysis that provides actionable insight into how people are engaging on social channels regarding policy within governmental organizations at the federal, state and local levels – a new and exciting space for us.”

In addition to access to the full Twitter Firehose, Crimson Hexagon collects and archives many other global social media content sources. This depth and breadth of content allows Crimson Hexagon’s global customer base to not only analyze a comprehensive set of current social media data, but also compare available data and results going back to 2008, providing powerful consumer insights to aid in strategic business decision making.

“We’re truly impressed with Crimson Hexagon’s incredibly user-friendly technology. This partnership allows us to explore online conversations further, providing insight into the meaning of the data for our customers in the federal sector, offering them the closest thing to tacit knowledge available,” said MicroTech Chief Technology Officer and Senior VP of Data Center Solutions, Dr. Roger Channing. “ForSight’s accuracy and ability to be language agnostic were huge factors when selecting a social data partner, particularly as we establish MicroTech International and expand our customer base.”

Ideal for partnerships with companies who are expanding globally, like MicroTech, the patented analysis algorithm that powers the ForSight platform is language agnostic and can perform social media analysis equally well in any language. Customers can easily leverage Crimson Hexagon’s global content sources and language-independent analysis capabilities without additional complex set up processes.

About MicroTech

MicroTech is a certified and verified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Business (SDVOB) and National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) certified supplier delivering robust process-driven performance for mission success. MicroTech applies its regimented process, enterprise IT experience, and state-of-the-art engineering solutions to integrate different technologies and create proven results that can respond to your strategic needs. MicroTech is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, EMC Velocity Partner, Cisco Gold Partner, CA Federal Solution Provider Gold Partner, HP Public Sector Federal Specialist Partner, Dell Certified Partner, Symantec Managed Services Partner, VMware Enterprise Partner, Autonomy Value Added Partner, Adobe Solutions Partner, Citrix Silver Solution Advisor, Oracle Silver Partner, and IBM Business Partner. MicroTech is an Inc. 500 Hall of Fame member, a Top 5 Fastest-Growing Hispanic-Owned Business (2009-2012), a 2011 Red Herring Global Top 100 Technology Innovator, a Deloitte 2012 Tech Fast 500 business, and the No. 1 Fastest Growing Private Communications / Networking Company in the Washington DC Metro area. ISO 20000 Information Technology Service Management and ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management Systems certified, CMMI Maturity Level 3 rated, and ITIL management qualified, MicroTech is headquartered just outside the Nation’s Capital in Tysons Corner, Virginia, with key offices throughout the U.S.

About Crimson Hexagon, Inc.

Crimson Hexagon, founded in 2007, is the leading provider of analysis software that delivers business intelligence from social media data for global corporations. Fast Company named Crimson Hexagon one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies on the Web. Powered by patented technology developed at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the Crimson Hexagon ForSight™ platform delivers the industry’s most comprehensive Big Data analysis capabilities for a variety of large-scale data sources. Clients include leading global organizations such as: Microsoft, Paramount Pictures, Starbucks, Simon & Schuster, Twitter, The United Nations, and many more. For more information go to CrimsonHexagon.com or read the Crimson Hexagon Social Media Monitoring and Analysis blog.