Facebook is a great source of information on how people are feeling. I can tell if my friends are happy or sad on a given day based on the updates that appear in my feed. Just imagine the potential of analysing what everybody says of Facebook on a given day. The ability to measure how happy or sad the Facebook users of the world are based on what they say on the social network. This is exactly what Facebook are doing with their Gross National Happiness based on an analysis of the positive and negative words people use when updating their Facebook status.
This is an example of buzz tracking and analysis. Looking at the words and phrases that people use in social media and then using sentiment analysis to assess how positively or negatively they feel about something. With Facebook, the opportunity is huge. If you combine the ability to analyse the sentiment in status updates with the vast amount of profiling data, the potential for insight into consumer behaviour is huge. Macro-level analysis of sentiment could be analysed. What is the impact on male students in New York of a new advertising campaign on the subway, for example? Or how does a government policy aimed at mums impact women in London? The ability to segment and analyse on this basis is huge. And if you add into this the ability to analyse the networks that people sit in on Facebook, and the impact an event has on them and on their friends, this could be a huge resource of information for brands and organisations to learn from.
It is, however, a shame that Facebook hasn't yet produced data like this. The initial analysis of the Gross National Happiness, for the US, shows two things: people are least happy when public figures die, and most happy during public holidays. Informative stuff.
The real opportunity of the Gross National Happiness analysis, and of buzz-tracking more generally is not to understand what a large mass of people think and do, but to combine this data with more detailed profiling information to really analyse what different segments of customers and stakeholders think. This is where buzz-tracking starts to add real value - comparing the discussions that different people have and analysing their sentiment based on other things we know about them. Are women more likely to be positive about a brand than men, for example. Are customers of a certain value more likely to respond positively to announced product changes than those who spend less per annum?
The Groos National Happiness index really does miss out on the real insight that you can get from buzz-tracking. By combining the universe of Facebook users, the distinctions and differences that exist, and that start to provide real insight into the way people think and behave, and hidden in the data. Buzz tracking offers a really valuable source of insight for brands and organisations, especially when it compares what people say (the buzz and sentiment) with other profiling data we have about them.
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