On its own, Twitter builds an image for companies; very few are aware of this fact. When a big surprise happens, it is too late: a corporation suddenly sees a facet of its business – most often a looming or developing crisis – flare up on Twitter. As always when a corporation is involved, there is money to be made by converting the problem into an opportunity: Social network intelligence is poised to become a big business.
In theory, when it comes to assessing the social media presence of a brand, Facebook is the place to go. But as brands flock to the dominant social network, the noise becomes overwhelming and the signal – what people really say about the brand – becomes hard to extract.
By comparison, Twitter more swiftly reflects the mood of users of a product or service. Everyone in the marketing/communication field becomes increasingly eager to know what Twitter is saying about a product defect, the perception of a strike or an environmental crisis. Twitter is the echo chamber, the pulse of public feelings. It therefore carries tremendous value.
Datamining Twitter is not trivial. By comparison, diving into newspaper or blog archives is easy; phrases are (usually) well-constructed, names are spelled in full, slang words and just-invented jargon are relatively rare. By contrast, on Twitter, the 140 characters limit forces a great deal of creativity.
Twitter
