iStrategyLabs

SXSW Recap Post: Positive Vs. Negative Sentiment

By Peter CorbettcloseAuthor: Peter Corbett Name: Peter Corbett
Email: peter@istrategylabs.com
Site: http://www.twitter.com/corbett3000
About: Peter is the CEO of iStrategyLabs and his full bio is in the About section.See Authors Posts (112) on March 15th, 2009

Posted in Buzz Monitoring, Digital Word of Mouth

I’m here at South By Southwest immersed in 5 days of interactive strategy and creative panel discussions. As a digital word of mouth practitioner I’m always interested in what people are saying about a brand – here’s the sentiment graph for “SXSW” as of today:

Here are a few posts about SXSW that are currently trending in my Scoutlabs buzz monitoring platform and are positive:

5 Ways South by Southwest Can Help Your Business

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March 09, 2009 | www.businesspundit.com

SXSW Interactive 2009 Resources & Information

Here are a some SXSW Interactive 2009 resources and information: – SXSW Interactive 2009 – the official website – SXSW Tools – web resources for SXSW attendees – my.SXSW – the official social…

March 09, 2009 | laughingsquid.com

SXSW Photos

I always say that the reason I like SXSW is because I get the chance to meet so many great people who I have either chatted with or who read CN. …So far SXSW 2009 has continued the trend.

March 14, 2009 | www.centernetworks.com

SXSW 2009 on BitTorrent: 6 GB of Free Music

The South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival is one of the largest and most popular in the United States. …For the fifth year in a row, SXSW has released a DRM-free, RIAA-safe collection of songs…

March 13, 2009 | digg.com

SXSW ‘09 Panel Recap

I participated in a panel at SXSW yesterday called “My Boss Doesn’t Get It: Championing Social Media to the Man.” Michael Wilson, CEO of Small World Labs, moderated; my fellow panelists were…

March 14, 2009 | www.beingpeterkim.com

Buzz Monitoring: Google vs. Microsoft Sentiment Analysis

By Peter CorbettcloseAuthor: Peter Corbett Name: Peter Corbett
Email: peter@istrategylabs.com
Site: http://www.twitter.com/corbett3000
About: Peter is the CEO of iStrategyLabs and his full bio is in the About section.See Authors Posts (112) on March 7th, 2009

Posted in Buzz Monitoring, Sentiment Analysis

One of the most important discipline areas at iStrategyLabs is buzz monitoring. While we’re technology solution agnostic, we’ve been using ScoutLabs a lot recently because they’ve created a product that is much less expensive than their competitors (something our clients certainly appreciate right now) and it works quiet well. There are a number of ways to conduct conversation monitoring, competitor monitoring, influencer identification and outreach etc., but this post will focus on just one facet: the comparison of two brands from a sentiment perspective.

Brands include in this buzz monitoring exercise:

Google and Microsoft

Buzz monitoring report range: February 6th – March 7, 2009

First, lets take a look at all blog posts mentioning “Microsoft” and see what the positive and negative sentiment of trend looks like.

On average there is more positive buzz generated about Microsoft than negative. Digging deeper into the numbers, we find that on average there are 5.4 more positive posts than negative posts about Microsoft. This could begin to serve as a benchmark for the brand, and since this is the first time we’ve done this analysis, there’s no way to know if these that a typical ratio for them.

Now lets take a look at all blog posts mentioning “Google”.

On average there is more positive than negative buzz for Google as well. Digging deeper, we find that on average there are 4.3 times more positive posts than negative posts about Google.

Next, we should see how their positive and negative sentiment stacks up against one another:

Volume comparison of positive posts for Microsoft and Google

Volume comparison of negative posts for Microsoft and Google

Lastly, let’s take a look at the share of voice between the two brands. This is a measure of who has a greater percentage of buzz about them on the web compared to the other. Keep in mind that if you look at the two graphics above, they’ll look pretty even. What you’re not seeing are all the “neutral’ sentiment posts that account for the bulk of content out there:

With positive, negative and neutral posts accounted for, you can see that Google is talked about nearly twice as much as Microsoft. This is perhaps irrelevant at the top brand level, as Microsoft and Google do not compete head to head selling “Google” and “Microsoft” but they do compete in selling things like “Google Apps” and “Microsoft Office”, as well as “Azure”, “Google App Engine” and another product “Amazon S3″ rounds out the cloud computing space.

Share of voice for “Microsoft Office” vs. “Google Apps”

Clear Microsoft Office dominates the conversation, but Google Apps has a 13% share of voice when they’re market share is probably 10% of that (I don’t have those figures).

Share of voice for “Microsoft Office” vs. “Google Apps” vs. “Amazon S3″

Azure seems to be the most talked about cloud computing application. I wonder if my data is correct, as I believe Amazon S3 has been around for a lot longer…

What do you think? What comparisons would you like to see? I may include your requests in my next buzz monitoring report!