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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