Tweet Satisfaction Tracks 200+ Brands

Tweet Satisfaction, a free Twitter Analytics platform, recently added more than 100 companies, products and brands. Designed for brand manager, product managers, enterpreneurs, Tweet Satisfaction makes it easy to see “who’s tweeting happy and mad about your favorite brands?”

The brands tracked by Tweet Satisfaction are heavily weighted toward consumer and enterprise software, internet services, computers and electronics. This update expands coverage to include travel, education and personal finance.

Tweet Satisfaction will continue to expand coverage of brands based on the interest of current beta users. New brands will include vehicles, airlines, hotels, and select companies from TechCrunch 50.

Twitter attitude is a poor indicator of emotion or sentiment

Twitter’s advanced search uses emoticons : ) and : ( to infer a tweet’s attitude. Last week, Tweet Satisfaction STOPPED using emoticons to infer “happy” and “mad” tweets. Why?

In the end, it improved the signal-to-noise ratio of happy and mad tweets about brands. But, it wasn’t an easy decision.

Why are : ) and : ( poor indicators of emotion or sentiment?

What’s our Secret Sauce?

What will be the secret to Tweet Satisfaction’s success? I hope the answer is simple.

We set out to answer two questions: 1) What good and bad things were written about “xyz” on Twitter? 2) What is the trend of  “happy” and “mad” tweets about “xyz” over time?

Like many seemingly simple questions, mining the data to find an answer was not easy.

• Twitter‘s character count limit encourages users to save time and key strokes. This produces many 140 character run-on sentence fragments and creative ways of shortening proper names.
• Twitter‘s search API limits the number of tweets returned per API call  and does not return search results beyond an every shrinking time frame.
• Most tweets about “xyz” are neutral. Most tweets (roughly 95-99%) share links to news and announcements, post questions, or provide updates on what someone is doing, did or hopes to do.   Tweet Satisfaction is only interested in the rare tweets about “xyz” that include “happy” or “mad” emotions.

Working nights and weekends, our small team experimented with a variety of solutions to these challenges. Some worked better than others, and we’ll continue to refine the algorithms that identify whether a tweet is about “xyz” and whether the tweet is “happy” or “mad”.

Twitter for Business 201 – Social Media Monitoring

Twitter analytics and social media monitoring serve as the canary in the coal mine for many market driven companies. It provides insights that traditional business intelligence based on customer support calls will miss.

Imagine the perfect storm for a growing start-up. The company’s first iPhone App was released several days after a major upgrade to the online platform. At the same time, it launches massive search engine marketing, social media engagement, and other viral marketing campaign. The company was just featured in the Wall Street Journal and several leading blogs. Oh yeah, and it’s the peak sales season.

If this was your company, would you grab a surfboard and ride the wave? Or would you baton down the hatches and hope it blows over without major damage?

How long is Twitter’s Memory?

In March, the answer was 3 months. Today it’s 3 weeks. (Update August 2009: It’s now only 9 days. ) What’s next? Will Twitter limit search results to 3 days?

In March, Tweet Satisfaction began storing tweets that matched certain keywords. At the time, the Twitter Search API would return tweets for the last 3 months.  Searching in the online application would produce similar results.

Today, the both twitter search methods only produce results for the last 21 days.

Why reduce the search “look back” period by an order of magnitude?

In a word…   Oprah. In two words… Swine Flu.

Twitter has gone mainstream (well… technically it started it’s leap across the chasm to attract the early majority). As the volume of tweets (and searches) accelerates, Twitter is likely taking preventive steps to avoid the dreaded fail whale and unscheduled downtime.

The search limitation probably isn’t a problem for 98% of twitters users. [Update: many readers would like to find old tweets for links to articles or find a movie/club/restaurant review].

“On a personal level, I have trouble keeping up with a handful of CEOs, bloggers and friends. And, I don’t really care if your son beat you at xBox last Christmas.

But, this represents a huge loss to policy makers, marketers, product managers and entrepreneurs who hope to mine Twitter for competitive intel, customer satisfaction, public sentiment, or other business insights.

That leads to a bigger question: What’s Twitter doing with the data?

Is it throwing it away like yesterday’s garbage? Or, will it be charging a fee to data mine your tweets?

Post comments with your theory of the case.

PS> I tweeted this post.

What is Tweet Satisfaction?

Tweet Satisfaction is a start-up operating in stealth mode. Our product relies on the Twitter Search API and the emotions of Twitter’s users.  We expect to emerge from stealth mode with a private beta launch in summer 2009. Check back for more information.