Social Media Analysis

Standing by the side of Mahalaxmi Garbage transfer station , I felt happy that how even garbage contributes to a better tomorrow. Being an internet freak my mind dashed straight to the big pile of data collected daily by Social media websites. What we will get if we crawl and analyze the microbloging tools such as Twitter, Wikis, Social networking websites and millions of blog available on internet?
Social media analysis tends to separate out content analysis and structure analysis. In the age of web2.0, we have loads of data and information available on internet generated by millions of internet users. Here, arises another basic but very important question “Why”. Why academic institutions and companies are spending lots of money on analysis of this data? Why do we need to analyze this data.

Why?
From Industrial point of view, followings are the most probable reasons:

• Relationship between consumers and the product
• Identify Industrial Influence
• Identify competitors in the market.
• Identify competitor’s visibility
• Product review
• Identify presence of client
• Identify Client demand

Aspects which may gain Industrial usage in very near future are as follows

• Sentiment analysis
• Keyword analysis
• Social network analysis

Sources: The Next question is what data can we analyze? What sources we can include in it?

1. Blog posts / Comments: It doesn’t includes only blog posts but it includes comments also. By analyzing comment we get the sentiments of the reader and review of the author.
2. Microblog: Twitter is still growing rapidly and generating huge amounts of data every day which makes microblog a very important source for social media analysis.
3. Discussion Forums
4. Product Reviews on e-commerce websites viz, e-bay, amazon
5. Social networks like Facebook, orkut and myspace etc.
6. Photo / video sharing websites: flickr/youtube
7. Social news: Digg, ReadIt, stumble

It's very interesting to know how the day to day blabbers and spattering of a common man is about to gain an industrial value. You writing on facebook about how you feel today or you commenting on a particular product on e-bay can become a basis for an upcoming product launched by a multimillion firm. So whenever you tweet or whenever you comment on FB/Orkut and whenever you share a picture on flickr just remember you are making a contribution to a better tomorrow, which will be gifted to future mankind.

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SIXTH SENSE

We are sorry for not updating you all with some of the current changes that has been going around. We are finally again back to business telling you all about a product that has been doing the rounds-Sixth Sense.

How does one perceive and see things around? To begin with, it is a silly question. We have our five sense organs for it, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a sixth sense too? Today seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling are not the only information required to decide the credibility of an object. Why else would ‘Google’ be so popular! But you cannot always ‘log on’ when you need information and knowledge about the object in front of you. That’s where Sixth Sense comes in.

Sixth Sense- it connects the digital world to the physical one. The device (which can be worn around the neck) consist a projector, a mirror, a camera connected to the cell-phone and colored caps (like rings) which are put on the tips of thumb and the forefinger. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction. It is just like watching search results only without a required screen!

The Sixth Sense device caters to a variety of needs, like map navigation. The fingers would allow zooming in an out of the map layout and help search the exact location. If you buy some stuff, it will pop up all the information available about it, so you get the best deal. The drawing tool helps draw on any surface using the fingers. It recognizes free hand gestures too. Using hands ‘framing’ gestures, will click pictures and then later you can flip through those pictures. SixthSense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index finger and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing and ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail. The SixthSense system also augments physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting more information about these objects projected on them. For example, a newspaper can show live video news or dynamic information can be provided on a regular piece of paper. The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch.

The mind behind this intriguing device is Pranav Mistry, an Indian Student pursuing PhD in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s media lab. His work in detail can be viewed at www.pranavmistry.com

~Naineet

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About us

Free time tends to maximize your thinking abilities and leads you to something that may sometimes be very exciting. GeekOnNet.com has been such an experience for us. It’s an online portal where we write mainly about new online inventions, business events, innovative websites and web solutions.

We had a group known as the ‘Open Source’ during my IIT days, a group of students who used to share all the new ideas and solutions to solving assignments. Most of us were into blogging and used to put in our ideas into our own individual blogs. We used to meet up every time there was a barrage of assignments. Once during such a week, there came up an idea of having our own website and putting in all our technical discussions and analysis into that.

Me and two of my classmates Ranjeet Kumar Vimal and Deepak Mishra took of the initiative. Ranjeet posted the first article on June 9, 2008. He wrote about a 17 year girl earning $70K from internet. The response he got from the readers was very good. With time me and Deepak also joined in. We also bought the domain name “GeekOnNet.com” from US.

Our articles ranged from analysis and comparisons of online webportals to writing about budding entrepreneurs. We focused mainly on the online startups and portals. Also me and Ranjeet being from Computer Science department helped us, we could give a common man analysis of social networking websites- Orkut, Myspace, Facebook. When Crome and Bing was launched, people were looking out for comparisons and ours was the first to give a comprehensive analysis of both of them. The article on Mozilla and Internet Explorer received the maximum number of hits our portal ever received. Deepak had a different kind of a contribution to make. He comes from the Mechanical Engineering Department and belongs to a Theatre group in Mumbai. He had very good networking skills and had lots of contacts of Ex-IITians who were into entrepreneurship. We added a different section to our portal- the place where we wrote about the startups. GeekOnNet.com had finally become a startup for startups.

Some of our achievements:-

1. 4th most popular blogging website of Mumbai by the bloggers community of Mumbai (http://www.mumbaibloggers.net/2009/03 /the-results)
2. Ranked in top 10 most popular weblogs in the survey conducted by orkutheroes.com
3. Achieved Google page rank of 4 within six months of its inception
4. Invited & covered National Level business events for Economic Times-The power of ideas, Microsoft- Connect Bloggers Brief.
5. Reported more than 15,000 page views and 10,000 unique hits per month

It’s an year now that GeekOnNet started. It had been a very good learning experience for all the three of us. Ranjeet plans to work for an IT company in a few days and Deepak to continue with his theatre in Mumbai. I have joined SIBM,Pune for my Masters in Business Administration. I hope the distance doesn’t create a hindrance in continuing our website.

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MeraCareerGuide.com

It’s been long since I last updated GeekOnNet. I apologize to my avid readers for this delay. I was very busy with my final Masters Thesis. Finally am a post graduate (BTech. + MTech.) now in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-Bombay :) .

Ok, now back to the point. In the past two months there has been a backlog (pardon us for using the IIT jargon) of more than 15 Indian startups with us. The first in the list being meracareerguide.com.

It is a one stop destination for Education & Career related information, aims to address problems of students who are confused and have numerous questions about their particular field of interests. The website is designed to provide a platform to students from 15-24 age group, at the same time it will enable educational institutes to reach out to their target students.Using Internet as its platform, meracareerguide.com reaches out to students in every city and town of India. meracareerguide.com informs, connects and guides these students to a variety of educational programs. MeraCareerGuide.com provides the following set of services to users.

• Information about career that can be pursued after +2 and after graduation.
• Career Tests: scientifically designed assessments.
• Expert chat for career counseling.
• Forums for queries to be answered by community & Experts.
• Course planner that gives information about various courses and colleges across India.
• Interview queries.
• Resume preparation.
• Education related articles.

GeekOnNet team had detailed email interview with Surabhi Dewra (Founder) to get an insight of her entrepreneurial journey.

The Geeks: How did you get the idea to start meracareerguide.com?
Ans: We, ourselves, have been at the crossroads and so we understand the kind of guidance students require in their intermediate stage of education; though I happened to be lucky one to get to BITS-Pilani and then had constant access to great mentors.
During my college days, I took up activity of counseling in schools of Hyderabad and Bihar; and there realized students had many questions about their career and future prospects. Consequently, In 2007 founded MITR – a scholastic students' guide - in Hyderabad and later decided to have a pan India approach. As the web today has become the best medium, we decided to use the power of internet to solve many of educational issues and that’s how www.meracareerguide.com came into existence.

The Geeks: Whats your "Business Model" & "Revenue Model"?
Ans: The website is designed to provide a platform to students from age group 15-24 to use it for their educational queries; at the same time it enables educational institutes to reach out to their target students. So the revenue inflow is from educational institutes whereas the service is entirely free for students.

The Geeks: Who are your nearest competitors? How do you differentiate your service or product from that of others?
Ans: Studyplaces.com, I would say, is providing similar services but execution wise it’s totally different.
We provide a personalized approach. This approach helps students to easily understand how to use information they receive. Counseling and career requirements are very specific to each individual, which is ensured on www.meracareerguide.com through live chat feature where in students are allowed to have live interaction about their educational queries with our experts. We have given maximum attention to ensure that content is easily scannable and in chunk format making it is easily comprehensible and not overwhelming.

The Geeks: How many students or career advise seekers get benefited from meracareerguide.com?
Ans: We have students from various age groups who come to us for finding answers to their concerns regarding Why, How, When, Where and What about their career. In its two months of official launch, www.meracareerguide.com has 50,000 users hitting the portal and using the services.

The Geeks: What background skills, knowledge and experiences help you in your business?
Ans: Like I wrote earlier, I have experiences in counseling at schools of Hyderabad and Bihar. Those experiences have helped me have an insight into the students requirements. Also, my association with educational NGOs like Nachiketa Tapovan(Hyd) and Damini( Har.,Raj., Bihar,Jhrakhand & UP) has helped me understand the way an educational medium needs to be shaped. Where as, the usage of relevant technology to convert the idea into a website came from other founders of the site.

The Geeks: Where do you want to see meracareerguide.com 3 years down the line? Or whats your future plan?
Ans: We are planning to have network of 5000 schools and colleges and where in we can have career workshops. Apart from this, we would be launching a few career centric features on the portal which will help students in taking right decisions.

The Geeks: Advise for future entrepreneur ?
Ans: I have few lines from Rudyard Kipling’ poem ‘IF’, which I came across in my standard 8th while preparing for a poetry recitation competition and since then these lines have been my strength. I would like to quote a few of my favorite lines:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

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