This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas was just as large as ever, with thousands of vendors and more than 100,000 attendees (140K by one estimate). CES this year, however, was met with significant media backlash over industry consolidation and the general future of the show and those similar to it. But, is this same sentiment reflected by the overall social media universe as well?

Using Attensity’s social analytics solution, we found the most commonly used words across social media related to CES 2012. The results showed the words “Products and Electronics,” “Technology,” “Show,” “Smart TVs,” “Similar to last year’s” and “Justin Bieber” as the most frequently appearing.

As evidenced by the above words, social media users may share the complaint that there were too many players showing too many of the same exact products, much of which looked like the products exhibited during last year’s CES. But, that general complaint was outweighed by the excitement over such products and electronics as the new Smart TVs and a dancing robot promoted at the show by social media’s favorite pop star, Justin Bieber.

Accordingly, the share of impact by sentiment in social media for CES is more positive than negative or neutral.

So, why the disparity in sentiment toward CES between tech media and social media users? Aside from the “MOTSS (More of the Same Stuff) syndrome,” on which both sides seem to agree, the media is more prone to tradeshow and gadget fatigue. While social media users and consumers visit a show for a day or two every year or casually read about the products, tech media have to go abruptly into tradeshow mode right after the holidays. The fact that, these days, manufacturers introduce products throughout the year and often refresh individual product lines multiple times during a year, only adds to the media’s resentment toward shows occurring at the beginning of the calendar year, where vendors often hype products that never make it to market.

COMDEX and PC EXPO may have gone the way of the dodo bird after nearly two decades, respectively, due to oversaturation and the shrinking PC industry. But, CES, which for the past 45 years has been an annual showcase of products from all aspects of the consumer electronics industry, is not necessarily doomed to the same fate, as if it were another soap opera. Despite media predictions of only a few more years left for CES, the topic trending in social media in our last figure (below) still shows a strong following, with 91,054 users discussing the show on its opening day.

An article published today on Politico.com about the proposed SOPA legislation features the results of social analytics provided to Politico by Attensity. (Access to the article requires a subscription, so we did not link directly to it here.) The article, titled Analysis of Copyright Issue Shows Heavy Presence of Opponents in Social Media, states:

“It is not a surprise that in the social media world, the conversation about the Stop Online Piracy Act skews heavily toward opponents. In an analysis of 33,897 comments across social media sites in the week ending Jan. 15, 96 percent opposed SOPA, according to Attensity (http://www.attensity.com), a Palo Alto firm that looks at conversations across social media sites for brands. One of the highest retweets was a Jan. 8 Next Web story on an Android application called Boycott SOPA that identifies SOPA supporters by scanning a product’s barcode. It was retweeted 436 times.”

The Boycott SOPA campaign makes the argument that “whilst Internet-based companies have incurred the wrath of their anti-SOPA users and customers, hundreds of other supporting companies are not as easy to influence. However, that could be set to change with the launch of ‘Boycott SOPA‘ a new Android application that allows users to scan barcodes of different products to identify if the company that makes or sells it is a supporter of the Stop Online Piracy Act.”

Looking at the various lists of SOPA-supporting companies, there are certainly a number of well-known household names, so this would clearly go beyond symbolism if people made decisions based on the scans. Still, almost as high on the list of anti-SOPA initiatives was more of the Occupy-style, technology-driven symbolism, “#BlackoutSopa Change Profile”:

The biggest concern expressed about the SOPA bill is the DNS blocking provision that could lead to misuse and possibly compromise tens of thousands of Internet-based companies.

In terms of SOPA supporters, Rupert Murdoch (a relatively new Twitter user) is vociferous in his views on Google promoting piracy.  Understandably, Lamar Smith (author of the SOPA bill) gets quite a lot of traffic with ESA seemly a strong supporter in terms of being retweeted.

If I had to directly summarize this analysis, I would say that the SOPA-opposition is significantly more organized and vocal in using Social Media to make their point. Whether or not the social media outcry affects the outcome of the legislation remains to be seen.

Looking for some help in evaluating customer experience management solution providers? The landscape can be crowded and confusing, with different vendors offering varying approaches to the market. To help sort things out, Technology Evaluation Centers helps companies research, evaluate, and select the best enterprise software solutions for their unique business requirements. According to the TEC web site, TEC’s proven approach combines:

• Extensive online IT research, including knowledge bases that catalog vendors’ support for thousands of enterprise software features and functions;
• A proven software selection methodology, refined over hundreds of selection projects;
• State-of-the-art Web-based decision support technology designed specifically for software selection; and
• The expertise of analysts and software selection experts.

TEC recently covered Attensity in an independent review of our CEM suite. Here is an excerpt from the resulting report, titled A Product Note: Attensity and the Voice of the Customer:

“Attensity has found a way to truly capture the voice of the customer with its new breed of customer experience management (CEM) solutions. TEC analyst Jorge García looks at how Attensity’s CEM products can help organizations analyze customer conversations across multiple channels, extract actionable data and insights, and route conversations for rapid and effective response, improving their customers’ experience and loyalty.”

Click here to read the full report. Registration is required but free.

The results are in from Attensity’s analysis of the Yahoo! and ABC News GOP debate held on Saturday night in New Hampshire. Yahoo! news editor Phoebe Connelly published a summary of the results of Attensity’s analysis in a blog post titled Yahoo! readers still unsure about Romney as frontrunner.

During the course of the debate, Attensity teamed with Yahoo! to deliver Voice of the Voter real-time social media analytics on the Yahoo! web site, which monitored and analyzed social media conversations about the candidates and issues, and delivered live, dynamic reports to the Yahoo! elections web page. The reports included sentiment scores for each candidate, and ratings on the candidate’s performance on key issues such as the economy, defense, healthcare and foreign policy.

Throughout the debate, plus another 30 mins before and after the debate, Attensity categorized over 38,000 tweets in terms of hits/misses across all the candidates. Below are the details of the sentiment analysis Attensity performed:

MITT ROMNEY – seemingly more miss than hit. However, a good chunk of the negative feedback  (upwards of 30%) was tied to Romney’s poor record on job creation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Democrats led this twitter campaign with @TheDemocrats being the most retweeted:

“RT @TheDemocrats: FACT: Gov. Romney had one of the worst job-creation records in the country MA ranked 47th in job creation. http://t.co/tqAzqEoh #NHdebate”.

@TheDemocrats were also exclusive in homing in on foreign policy weakness:

“RT @TheDemocrats: Mitt Romney flip-flopped on Iraq. Full fact-check: http://t.co/zO03AU9R #NHdebate”.

RICK PERRY – Most of the negative sentiment related to foreign policy particular with respect to Perry’s comments about Iraq:

“RT @laurenist: Out drinking. Check in on Twitter. Rick Perry wants to reinvade Iraq. Continue drinking.”

RON PAUL – Seemed to do well.  Has a tendency to make “unspeakable” or taboo statements but such comments do not always result in polarized sentiment. The following was quite heavily retweeted but minimal sentiment was subsequently generated:

“RT @AriBerman: Ron Paul: “how many times have you seen a rich white person get the electric chair?”

Paul talked about Martin Luther King being one of his heroes, which resulted in mass “curiosity”.

Using Attensity, it is very easy to get at relationships in text like public perceptions that certain candidates may have slammed other candidates. For example, Ron Paul supporters felt that he hammered Santorum particularly on “debt”. Paul’s dress code also consistently gets picked on in these debates, and there was additional skepticism for Paul among female detractors:

“RT @emilyslist: Ron Paul seems to be pro-right to privacy unless you’re talking about women’s health… #nhdebate”.

We do not show non-sentiment or neutral topics here, but the microphone issue that Ron experienced did result in high traffic.

RICK SANTORUM – Santorum’s comments on “no classes in America” generated a lot of commentary. Again, even though we visually do not show retweets (over 800 retweets), it did result in some negative sentiment.  The more astute attendees pointed out that, on his website, Rick stated he was all about helping the middle class:

“RT @Slate: RT @buzzfeedben: Headline on Santorum website: “Santorum hopes to rebuild middle class” http://t.co/uekiNXIP #classwarwar”.

No surprise that Santorum’s stance on gay marriage led to a huge spike in negative sentiment, some of it humorous:

“RT @billyeichner: You’ll appreciate Rick Santorum more once you realize he’s being played by Glenn Close”.

Rick was somewhat deft in using Paul’s microphone malfunction to his advantage:

“Santorum Zings Ron Paul Over Mic Trouble: ‘It Caught You Not Telling The Truth’ http://t.co/z7lkpEDr”.

Overall, Santorum’s supporters felt he gave Ron Paul a good run for this money.

JON HUNTSMAN – His promoters appreciated how Huntsman was more focused on New Hampshire than the other candidates.  The Washington Post pushed his job-creation successes:

“RT @washingtonpost: Why would Huntsman be better? Says his state was No. 1 in job creation, not No. 47 like Mass. (ouch, Mitt!) #NHDebate”.

Huntsman speaking in Chinese resulted in massive traffic, which was mostly not sentiment-based in nature.  However, for many Republicans, he lost the game right there:

“RT @Lawrence: Huntsman just lost the China debate for Repub audience. Of course Romney got applause for nonsense.”

NEWT GINGRICH – Gingrich still seems to have a “crazy uncle” image among detractors. The first clue was a spike in “yellow shirt” mentions with commenters playfully wondering:

“is newt gingrich’s shirt yellow or just REALLY dirty? Doesn’t matter, the next time I suit up (which happends once a year) yellow it is!”

Talking about the “sanctity of marriage” was always going to be a slippery slope for Gingrich, given that this topic received a lot of negative sentiment during the last debate. Curiously, the biggest hit for Gingrich was his articulation of media bias.

“RT @KLSouth: –> RT @brentbozell: Gingrich just STOMPED the left-wing press, and showed their sheer hypocrisy. Standing ovation. #nhd …”

And finally, the Sheldon Adelson news, which was mass tweeted, was timely, one of the first initial hits as the debate got into the early stages:

“RT  @chucktodd: .@RalstonFlash just reported Vegas mogul Sheldon Adelson has written a $5M check to the Gingrich SuperPAC. GameOn”

Interested in how we got these results? Email us at sales@attensity.com.

Giving viewers a voice in the Republican presidential debate

Attensity is excited to be teaming up with Yahoo!, the premier digital media company, to provide millions of viewers a voice in the upcoming ABC News debate to be held on Saturday, January 7^th at 9pm EST/6pm PST in New Hampshire.

During the course of the debate, Attensity’s Voice of the Voter real-time socialmedia analytics will monitor and analyze social media conversations about the candidates and issues, and deliver live, dynamic reports to the Yahoo! elections web site at http://news.yahoo.com/elections/debate/. The reports will include sentiment scores for each candidate, and ratings on the candidate’s performance on key issues such as the economy, defense, healthcare and foreign policy.

Below is an example of the kind of analysis that will be available LIVE during the debate this Saturday…