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Trackur Adds the Most Accurate Sentiment Tagging in the World!

posted on July 30, 2009

I’m excited to announce a much sought after feature to Trackur’s social media monitoring dashboard: sentiment tagging.

I’m often asked why Trackur doesn’t offer the ability to automatically measure the sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) of any discovered item. I typically reply with two reasons.

a). Sentiment analysis combined with an $18 a month price point just don’t go together.

b). Automated sentiment analysis just doesn’t work well.

Well, you can cross the first one off your list as of today. We’ve just added sentiment tagging to all Trackur plans. It allows Trackur users to manually mark the sentiment of any discovered item, sort results by sentiment and–with Corporate plans and higher–export those results to a spreadsheet.

Here’s how it looks:

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AOL Takes Its Lumps in the Last Quarter

posted on July 30, 2009

AOL logoWith all of news of the new mega Micro-bing-ahoo uber, super, partner / merger (insert your pet name here) in the past 24 hours, AOL tried to sneak one by us. Since are never ones to let someone try to skip past us with news it’s only fair that AOL get its moment in the spotlight. Trouble is this spotlight is one that most like to avoid.The Baltimore Business Journal reports that the soon to be cast away spin off of Time Warner had a rough go in the 2nd quarter

Advertising sales at AOL fell 21 percent last quarter, and parent company Time Warner Inc. said it is still on track to spin off the AOL unit this year.

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Dear Microsoft, Thank You! Love, Barry Diller

posted on July 30, 2009

Barry Diller: Microsoft, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

1. Your deal with Yahoo shadowed our poor Q2 financial results.

While the whole world focused on the minutiae of the search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, Diller’s IAC released its quarterly numbers. They weren’t up to analyst estimates, so I’m sure Diller was glad to have the insulation offered by the Microhoo hype.

IAC said revenue from its media and advertising unit, which includes search engine Ask.com, fell by 10% to $168.6 million. The company’s overall revenue declined 4% to $340 million.

2. When our deal with Google expires in 2012, we now have options.

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For Fun: Microsoft/Yahoo Caption Contest

posted on July 29, 2009

Let’s face it, the news is going to be swamped with the MSFT/YHOO deal today. So, for some light-hearted relief, let’s have a caption contest. Here’s an official photo provided courtesy of Yahoo!/Microsoft:

Leave your caption in the comments below and the best one–as chosen by me tomorrow at 9am ET–will win a $25 Amazon gift card. Please keep them clean.

Here’s mine: “We’ll take care of search from here on out, you can keep the “goofy, over-sized pen” business.” ;-)

We have a winner!

I have to give kudos to all the Pilgrims that left a caption–you guys are funny! In the end, this one made me laugh the hardest:

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It’s a Deal! Welcome bingahoo Into the Internet World

posted on July 29, 2009

Microsoft yahoo 2It just seems like yesterday that I was whining about getting some kind of a deal done already to end the ongoing drama of the Microsoft – Yahoo dance. Well, I know that the announcement of the deal finally happening has nothing to do with my level of frustration, I can only imagine that there are more than a few relieved folks on both sides of this sometime contentious negotiation.
The result is best described from the official press release

Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

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Forrester Goes Deep Regarding Online Behaviors

posted on July 29, 2009

Forrester LogoForrester Research has just released a study that gives a look over the past five years of the changes that have occurred in Internet usage among various groups. Much of the findings make sense but as always it’s the numbers and percentage increase / decreases that are of interest. For an executive summary of the report you can go here.

Some of the findings include:

- Broadband use continues to grow but is slowing as many of the US households that can afford the service now actually have broadband access to the Internet. The implications for video streaming and other high bandwidth needs are obvious.

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Twitter Launches New Homepage–A New Focus Too?

posted on July 28, 2009

You’re looking at Twitter’s new homepage design.

Nice, huh?

What I don’t get is how this helps you to understand how to use Twitter. That was the goal that cofounder Biz Stone stated, right?

Instead of landing on Twitter and thinking, “oh, it’s a place where I share updates about my life,” it now suggests “oh, it’s a place where I can search for stuff…isn’t that what Google’s for?”

There’s been a lot of talk about Twitter’s “real time” search being a challenger to Google, so perhaps this is an intentional change of focus. Still, I can’t help wonder if Twitter’s moved too far “off topic” with this design.

What do you think of it?