Error happens on both sides in sentiment analysis / opinion mining. Assume you wanted to understand, quantitatively, if the books published by Penguin are better received/perceived by customers than say, DoubleDay. One way to crack that problem would be to go to Amazon.com and mine the opinions. It stands to reason that books published by one company would receive a higher weighted average star rating, wouldn’t they? But what if that was inadequate, and you wanted to understand the general mood and tone of what was being actually written – presumably so you could learn and adjust? What then? Assume extraction and a well-formatted file. In other words, assume a dataset. Consider two machines, m and n, that operates on[…]

London was certainly an adventure and a lot was learned. It was a whirlwind 20 hours. I spent a lot of time listening at eMetrics. There was a very large contingent of search and email marketers there – looking to see what this social media thing was all about. The panels on that topic were geared for that audience and it was particularly interesting to hear how others are explaining the opportunities in social media. I can’t/won’t share the details of private discussions that happened over the course of the day and next night. I spent a lot time talking at eMetrics. I went to London with Three Calls To Action of the Audience: 1. Join the WAA’s European Research[…]

So just what have I been up to? I’ve been dividing my time between a major initiative and product development. Much of my involvement revolves around Evidence Based Marketing – and it’s literally that deadly. It’s that level of sustainable competitive advantage. It’s like a Philosoraptor armed with an RPG, riding a shark. Yeaaaaaaaaaaah. The most interesting aspect has been the integration of measurement science with information architecture with development with creative with product development. There are continuous collisions between the desire for intuitive simplicity with utility with robust functionality with elegant design with data accuracy – all within budget and a desired launch date of yesterday. The best business models are those which you solve a problem for a[…]

I’ll be in London next week for a whirlwind 46 hours, coming for eMetrics and staying for the company. I’m looking forward to talking to Lovett to carry on where we left off two weeks ago. I’ll be talking more about Villanueva and linking in Earned Media Value (EMV), as well as talking about the differentiation in the definition. I’d like to meet up with Andy Lepki who does the analytics over at The Guardian. There are a few tweeple on the list. If you’re at eMetrics London too, don’t be a stranger. I don’t know nearly enough of you. I took in the British Election coverage on BBC World – garnering scorn for how much of it took up[…]