Data Mining

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  • Do Predictive Modelers Need to Know Math?

    Data Mining and Predictive Analytics
    1 Apr 2013 | 4:49 pm
    (Note: this post was first published in the March 2013 Edition of the Predictive Analytics Times) Predictive analytics is just a bunch of math, isn’t it? After all, algorithms in the form of matrix algebra, summations, integrals, multiplies and adds are the core of what predictive modeling algorithms do. Even rule-based approaches need math to compute how good the if-then-else rules are. I was participating in a predictive analytics course recently and the question a participant asked at the end of two days of instruction was this: “it’s been a long time since I’ve had to do this kind…

  • The Math Errors That Slip Through the Crack

    The Numbers Guy
    Carl Bialik
    19 Apr 2013 | 7:25 pm
    The finding that a prominent economics paper was based in part on a spreadsheet coding error highlights the cracks in quality control that can allow such mistakes to slip through.

  • SAP builds out HANA platform and ecosystem

    Computerworld BI and Analytics News
    16 May 2013 | 11:35 am
    Anyone remotely within the orbit of SAP lately knows that its number-one focus is the HANA in-memory database and development platform. At this week's Sapphire conference in Orlando, the vendor sought to show the progress it is making in both building out HANA's capabilities as well as attracting developers and partners to HANA.

  • Most popular software clients used for tweeting

    iTrend Blog
    Michael Alatortsev
    2 May 2013 | 10:43 am
    Our data discovery platform has recently analyzed 7 million tweets related to Technology and Healthcare, to see what software people prefer to use when tweeting. Twitter for iPhone is the most popular choice. It is followed by “Web” (people using their web browsers to post a message), Twitter for Android, Twitterfeed, and Twitter for Blackberry (that one was a bit surprising): Top 25 most popular Twitter clients Here’s what Top 100 looks like: Twitter for iPhone 1,575,772 web 1,148,269 Twitter for Android 756,128 twitterfeed 573,741 Twitter for BlackBerry® 214,918 Tweet…

  • Math and Predictive Analytics - A Personal Account

    Data Mining and Predictive Analytics
    26 Apr 2013 | 9:55 am
    Last week I taught a workshop at Predictive Analytics World entitled Supercharging Prediction: Hands-On with Ensemble Models. The workshop was intended to introduce predictive modelers to the concept of ensembles through a combination of lecture to provide an overview of model ensembles and hands-on to gain experience building ensembles using Salford Systems SPM v7.0 (Salford Systems sponsored the workshop). This morning, Heather Hinman, a Marketing Communications Manager at Salford Systems, posted comments on attending that workshop at the Salford Systems blog. Two comments were particularly…
 
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    The Numbers Guy

  • Tough Math of Victim Funds

    Carl Bialik
    17 May 2013 | 8:10 pm
    Kenneth Feinberg explains his approach to deciding how to distribute funds for victims of tragedies such as the Boston Marathon bombings.

  • Same-Sex Divorce Stats Lag

    Carl Bialik
    3 May 2013 | 8:53 pm
    As gay-rights advocates push for more states to legalize same-sex marriage, they are also pushing for the right to same-sex divorce. But the stats on this new form of relationship split are lagging.

  • The Cost of Terror

    Carl Bialik
    26 Apr 2013 | 5:52 pm
    Economists say the long-term cost of the Boston bombings likely is small, but there is plenty of uncertainty attached to that projection, as there is to estimates of the cost of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

  • The Math Errors That Slip Through the Crack

    Carl Bialik
    19 Apr 2013 | 7:25 pm
    The finding that a prominent economics paper was based in part on a spreadsheet coding error highlights the cracks in quality control that can allow such mistakes to slip through.

  • One Size May Not Fit All in Obesity Definition

    Carl Bialik
    12 Apr 2013 | 7:27 pm
    Samoa Air's decision to charge airfare by passenger weight has highlighted the obesity crisis in Pacific islands -- and some controversy over just how severe the crisis is.
 
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    Data Mining and Predictive Analytics

  • Math and Predictive Analytics - A Personal Account

    26 Apr 2013 | 9:55 am
    Last week I taught a workshop at Predictive Analytics World entitled Supercharging Prediction: Hands-On with Ensemble Models. The workshop was intended to introduce predictive modelers to the concept of ensembles through a combination of lecture to provide an overview of model ensembles and hands-on to gain experience building ensembles using Salford Systems SPM v7.0 (Salford Systems sponsored the workshop). This morning, Heather Hinman, a Marketing Communications Manager at Salford Systems, posted comments on attending that workshop at the Salford Systems blog. Two comments were particularly…

  • Do Predictive Modelers Need to Know Math?

    1 Apr 2013 | 4:49 pm
    (Note: this post was first published in the March 2013 Edition of the Predictive Analytics Times) Predictive analytics is just a bunch of math, isn’t it? After all, algorithms in the form of matrix algebra, summations, integrals, multiplies and adds are the core of what predictive modeling algorithms do. Even rule-based approaches need math to compute how good the if-then-else rules are. I was participating in a predictive analytics course recently and the question a participant asked at the end of two days of instruction was this: “it’s been a long time since I’ve had to do this kind…

  • What To Take Home from Your Next Predictive Analytics Conference

    14 Feb 2013 | 11:09 am
    Why should one go to a predictive analytics conference? What should one take home from a conference like Predictive Analytics World (PAW)? There are many reasons conferences are valuable including interacting with thought leaders and practitioners, seeing software and hardware tools (the exhibit hall), and learning principles of predictive analytics from talks and workshops. This post focuses on the talks, and in particular, case studies. There is no quicker way to upgrade our capabilities than having someone else who has "been there" tell us how they succeeded in their development and…

  • Using Geographic Data

    10 Feb 2013 | 12:18 pm
    Most organizations collect and maintain some type of geographic data, yet many ignore this data during analysis. Any business has some record of customer addresses, for instance, but this data is usually formatted in an awkward, non-numeric form. Geographic data can be very predictive, though, since behaviors being predicted often have some correlation to location.So, how might one use geographic data? Possible answers depend on several factors, most importantly the volume and type of such data. A company serving a national market in the United States, for instance, will have customer…

  • When Analysis Isn't the Answer

    2 Feb 2013 | 7:23 am
    Data mining is an important tool whose benefits have been demonstrated in diverse fields, among business, government and non-profit organizations. Its application areas continue to grow, especially given the ever-shrinking cost of gathering and organizing data. Yet, there are problems for which data mining is wholly unsuited as a solution.To understand when data mining is not applicable, it will be helpful to define precisely when it is applicable. Data mining (inferential statistics, predictive analytics, etc.) requires data stored in a machine format of sufficient volume, quality and…
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    natural language processing blog

  • What is a sparse difference in probability distributions?

    30 Apr 2013 | 7:36 am
    Sparsity has been all the rage for a couple of years now. The standard notion of "sparse" vector u is that the number of non-zeros in u is small. This is simply the l_0 norm of u, ||u||_0. This norm is well studied, known to be non-convex, and often relaxed to the l_1 norm of u, ||u||_1: the sum of absolute values. (Which has the nice property of being the "tightest" convex approximation to l_0.)In some circumstances, it might not be that most of u is zero, but simply that most of u is some fixed scalar constant a. The "non-constant" norm of u would be something like "the number of components…

  • Teaching (intro, grad) NLP

    27 Dec 2012 | 8:56 pm
    I had a post a while back on teaching ML that I still basically stand by.  I've taught intro grad NLP here at UMD twice now, and a sort-of-similar-course back at Utah once.  I find these courses really hard to teach.  And not for the usually bemoaned reason of the CS/linguistics mix -- I think it's possible to deal with that, and certainly it's an issue that's been talked about a lot.What I find difficult is that NLP (and CL) is a collection of problems, techniques, ideas, frameworks, etc. that really are not tied together in any reasonable way other than the fact that they…

  • NIPS stuff...

    9 Dec 2012 | 8:36 pm
    NIPS is over as of last night.  Overall I thought the program was strong (though I think someone, somewhere, is trying to convince me I need to do deep learning -- or at least that was the topic d'jour... or I guess d'an? this time).  I wasn't as thrilled with the venue (details at the end) but that's life.  Here were some of the highlights for me, of course excluding our own papers :P, (see the full paper list here)... note that there will eventually be videos for everything!User-Friendly Tools for Studying Random MatricesJoel A TroppThis tutorial was awesome.  Joel has…

  • Sure, you can do that....

    26 Sep 2012 | 7:24 am
    I'll warn in advance that this is probably one of the more controversial posts I've written, but realize that my goal is really to raise questions, not necessarily give answers.  It's just more fun to write strong rhetoric :).Let me write down a simple Markov Chain:Download some data from the webCall part of that data the input and part of it the labelTrain a classifier on bag of words and get 84% accuracySubmit a paper to *ACLGo to 1Such papers exist in the vision community, too, where you replace "bag of words" with "SIFT features" and "*ACL" with "CVPR/ICCV."  In that community…

  • Somehow I totally missed NIPS workshops!

    15 Sep 2012 | 12:13 pm
    I don't know how it happened or when it happened, but at some point NIPS workshops were posted and papers are due about a week from now and I completely missed it!  The list of workshops is here:    http://nips.cc/Conferences/2012/Program/schedule.php?Session=WorkshopsSince my job as a blogger is to express my opinion about things you don't want to hear my opinion about, I wish they'd select fewer workshops.  I've always felt that NIPS workshops are significantly better than *ACL workshops because they tend to be workshops and not mini-conferences (where "mini" is a…
 
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    Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData

  • Five Tools - Customers

    Kevin
    20 May 2013 | 8:15 pm
    Yesterday, I introduced the concept of a 5-tool baseball player.  Great baseball players: Hit for average. Hit for power. Are good base runners. Are good fielders. Can throw the baseball well. The same concept holds for customers.  The best customers possess five tools: Purchases Every Year. Purchases Multiple Times Per Year. Purchases Multiple Items Per Order. Purchases High Margin Items. Purchases Without The Aid Of Advertising. I know, you're going to say, "well, the customer buys from multiple channels".  Well, no.  That's a byproduct of purchasing multiple times per…

  • Dear Catalog CEOs: A Five Tool Player

    Kevin
    19 May 2013 | 8:15 pm
    Dear Catalog CEOs: In baseball, there is a player called a "5 Tool Player": Hits for average. Hits for power. Runs the bases well. Throws. Fields. Obviously, these players are hard to find.  Terribly hard to find.  I possessed exactly zero of the skills when I played baseball in high school. What are the five tools that yield an outstanding business executive, a person who could run your company and chart a viable course into the future? How many employees in your current pipeline have all five tools?  How many could replace you?  After all, it's your job to make sure that…

  • Draft and Develop

    Kevin
    16 May 2013 | 8:15 pm
    In 2005, the Green Bay Packers had a quarterback named Brett Favre.  You might remember him.  Three MVP awards, two NFC Championships, one Super Bowl Title.  Future Hall of Famer.  He would play for six more seasons (2005 - 2010). And yet, Ted Thompson drafted a Quarterback named Aaron Rodgers.  At the time, the decision was kind of a head scratcher.  In retrospect, it was a wise, wise decision.  Via a "draft and develop" philosophy, Mr. Rodgers was groomed to become the starting quarterback. What does this have to do with talent in e-commerce / retail /…

  • 40% Off

    Kevin
    15 May 2013 | 8:15 pm
    This is pretty much the limit, as far as pushing the peanut on percentage off promotions. I suppose you could go to 49% off plus free shipping. Once you get to 50% off, you're in the realm of clearance, and that sets off a whole different customer mindset. There are at least four theories, surrounding discounts and markup. The first theory is that you are able to charge a high markup as a premium for offering highly desired merchandise.  The most successful companies I work with tend to earn gross margin rates that are in the low 60% range.  In other words, the $49.99 item that we…

  • Decoupling: The iPad

    Kevin
    14 May 2013 | 8:15 pm
    Here's what I want you to try: Select every customer from your database who purchased via an iPad in the past year. Measure the percentage that purchase via an iPad on the very next purchase. If the percentage is greater than 50%, your mobile business is in the process of decoupling from the e-commerce experience.  You've got excitement, and you've got challenges.  Both will make coming to work worthwhile. If the percentage is less than 20%, your mobile business is not being embraced by your customers ... on a subsequent purchase, the customer migrates away from the iPad. Or lump…
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    Neoformix

  • Visual Book Selector

    8 May 2013 | 5:00 am
    One common pattern I see in many interactive applications is to support a person who is selecting a few items from some larger set. Often these items have various characteristics that the person wants to use in some way to guide their selection process. The characteristics can be numeric quantities, dates, categories, or names of things. Showing all the items in a list and allowing the person to sort by one of the attributes is often a decent default solution. In other cases it's more useful to consider multiple attributes at a time during the selection process. Maybe you want items that are…

  • Star Wars Movie Fingerprints

    27 Mar 2013 | 4:35 am
    Recently YouTube had a video that showed all six Star Wars movies at once. They were placed in a 2 by 3 matrix and had an audio track of all the movies superimposed. It was an interesting experiment that has since been removed based on copyright grounds. Before it was removed I was able to do some simple analysis on the video and extract some details of the individual episodes of the Star Wars series. Basically, I produced something very similar to a classic work called Cinema Redux™ by Brendan Dawes, done in 2004. Each individual movie in the series was reduced to a collection of small…

  • Obesity Slopegraph

    26 Feb 2013 | 11:40 am
    Last week the wonderful Guardian Datablog published an interesting post called Obesity worldwide: the map of the world's weight. It contains a map that shows with color the rates of obesity around the world. The accompanying chart gives data for different time frames and for both male and female which you can select and view on the map. When I saw the chart I immediately thought of a number of interesting questions that could not be easily answered with the map or chart. What is the trend over time? Do these trends exist worldwide? Which countries are exceptions to the trend? Which countries…

  • Neoformix Site Redesign

    19 Feb 2013 | 3:10 am
    In 2006, I started this blog as an outlet for my creative personal work as well as to gather in one place references to interesting work by other people. Since then, Neoformix has grown into a full-time business for me specializing in the development of custom data visualizations. I have just spent some time giving the website it's first facelift in 7 years. I hope you like it! I've tried to simplify the design and emphasize that Neoformix is a business by designing a main page that highlights some projects and moving the blog to a secondary page. Thanks to Twitter Bootstrap for a powerful…

  • Word Hearts Updated

    5 Feb 2013 | 5:05 am
    About five years ago I posted a simple little application called Word Hearts which lets you fill a heart shape with words. Last year it was the most visited page on my site despite the fact that it was still a java applet based application which many modern browsers won't render. I have updated this tool to use ProcessingJS so it runs well in modern browsers. There is also enhanced functionality like: You can fill circles, diamonds, stars, and squares as well as the original heart shape There are more fonts to choose from You can easily use small symbols like hearts, happy faces etc., in your…
 
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    Trends and Outliers

  • Data Analysis to Better Manage the Sales Pipeline

    Spotfire Blogging Team
    21 May 2013 | 5:55 am
    The recent Spotfire on-demand webcast, “What’s Hiding in Your Sales Data?” covers the many challenges faced by sales organizations trying to turn hot leads into new customers. The webcast also discusses how Spotfire is used to seamlessly access Salesforce.com data and enhance traditional reporting capabilities. One of the most common reasons given for higher than anticipated losses in any quarter is that deals in the pipeline fail to close as expected.     Here’s a sample clip from the webcast followed by a post on how data analysis can help companies better manage the…

  • The Case for Risk Analytics in Banking

    Spotfire Blogging Team
    20 May 2013 | 5:55 am
    As regional and international banks emerge from the 2008 financial crisis, many institutions are continuing a strong focus on risk management to ensure that they’re complying with more stringent regulations and are loaning and investing cash wisely. Risk concerns continue to be top-of-mind for bankers. A combination of lower asset yields and loosening loan terms for mid-market and large businesses amid an uptick in commercial and industrial lending is increasing risks for banks, according to an article in American Banker. “As profits on loans narrow and competition for borrowers…

  • Analytics to Identify the ROI for Renewable Energy Investments

    Spotfire Blogging Team
    16 May 2013 | 5:55 am
    A big part of the challenge for companies looking to pour money into renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power is determining whether there is enough sustainable wind or sunlight in a particular geography to maximize investments in these technologies. Companies looking to reap the benefits of Mother Nature’s renewable energy sources can use analytics to evaluate multiple factors, including the average amount of cloud cover, direct sunlight, and the wind energy potential that’s available to justify investments in renewable energy systems. For instance, even in sunlight-rich…

  • Analytics, King James and the Next Generation of Moneyball

    Spotfire Blogging Team
    15 May 2013 | 5:55 am
    Perhaps the most visible evidence of the competitive advantage that can be fueled by data analysis is LeBron James’ performance in the NBA playoffs this year and last, compared to previous lackluster post-season play by the Miami Heat superstar. But King James’ less-than-stellar performance on the basketball court happened before he took a hard look at the analytics behind his play, notes Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, in a post in Harvard Business Review. “Nothing makes serious competitors more open to analytics than…

  • Mobile Carriers Dial Into Analytics Investments

    Spotfire Blogging Team
    14 May 2013 | 5:55 am
    Quality issues and cost pressures are leading telecommunications carriers to ramp up their investments in analytics tools that can be used to help them improve the customer experience, lower churn, and identify opportunities for improving operational efficiencies, according to a newly-released study from Accenture. Executives across 30 communications and media companies say they plan to invest in network analytic tools to improve network planning, enhance the quality of service, and improve the customer experience, according to the survey. Carriers commonly use network analytics tools to…
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    PolicyMap

  • What’s New on PolicyMap in May?

    Maggie McCullough
    21 May 2013 | 1:32 pm
    Customer Spotlight: YOU! With the release of our data loader earlier this year, you’ve been busy loading your own address level files to view on top of the data available in PolicyMap. While most of you choose to keep this data private or share it confidentially within your organization, some of you have chosen to load data and post it for the public to access. You’ll find these customer-shared datasets in the Add Sites menu to the left of the map. The spreadsheet data loader is a very exciting and unique tool, created to give users the ability to easily upload and visualize a list of…

  • International Census Resources

    Kristin Crandall
    17 May 2013 | 2:18 pm
    Have you ever wished that PolicyMap had data for other countries outside of the United States? We at PolicyMap also think this would be very neat! While our scope here at PolicyMap is currently limited to the United States, we have decided to dedicate a few blog posts to letting our users know about resources for gathering demographic data in other countries. One place to start is actually within our own Census Bureau. According to the website of the U.S Census Bureau’s International Programs division, the Bureau actually does a fair amount of work abroad, including Capacity Building…

  • New USDA Food Access data now on PolicyMap

    Bernie Langer
    16 May 2013 | 6:49 am
    Who needs a supermarket, but doesn’t have one? The US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service has recently released new data at its Food Access Research Atlas. It contains the results of a newly-updated study based on 2010 data on areas where people have low access to grocery stores and supermarkets. The last USDA study, conducted with 2006 data, identified these areas as “Food Deserts” (a term no longer being used officially). The study calculates an estimate of the number of people in each Census tract who live farther than a specified distance from the nearest…

  • PolicyMap releases Boxwood Means home sale data for 2012Q3

    Katie Nelson
    9 May 2013 | 6:18 am
    2012 saw more home sales nationwide than any year for the past five years, according to the National Association of Realtors. For the first time in a while we are beginning to hear about a shrinking supply and looming increases in interest rates (see for example the New York Times). PolicyMap has just updated our home sales data to include transactions from the third quarter of 2012. While national numbers come out very quickly, it takes somewhat longer to gather the detailed information at the county, ZIP code, tract, and block group geographies. The reason for the lag-time is that it can…

  • Attend a CultureBlocks Information Session

    Phil Vu
    7 May 2013 | 8:53 am
    With the successful launch of CultureBlocks and the great reviews from users, reporters, and academics, we wanted to make sure everyone has the chance to learn how to use this fantastic tool. If you are in the Philadelphia area, the best way to become acquainted with CultureBlocks is to attend one of our upcoming information sessions. You’ll get a first-hand look at how you can leverage the power of the app for a variety of different needs, and get your questions answered by the CultureBlocks Help Desk staff. These sessions are free to attend and will be taking place in several different…
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    Revolutions

  • R programming challenge: Escape the zombie horde

    David Smith
    20 May 2013 | 2:42 pm
    So when the world is taken over by a Zombie horde, you're going to want to figure out a way to get the human population to safety. This R script by econometrician Francis Smart won't help you do that exactly, but given a list of waypoints to navigate through zombie-infested lands to a safe house, it will tell you how many how many members of your human party survive:  While zombie-escaping might not seem to be a terribly useful application of R (until the outbreak comes, anyway), Francis's script comes with detailed comments that make it a useful example of simulation and…

  • Because it's Friday: Compendium of Logical Fallacies

    David Smith
    17 May 2013 | 1:44 pm
    Ahh, arguing on the Internet. Whether it's about politics, religion, culture or science, if you're anything like me you've had 1000 online arguments and changed the mind of exactly nobody. Still, it's fun to exercise those debating muscles, and now with the handy website thou shalt not commit logical fallacies you have the perfect riposte to any invalid, inappropriate or just plain wrong argument (click for the full version): Someone impugning your character instead of responding to your well-reasoned point? Send 'em over to Ad-Hominem land. Asking you to prove a…

  • R 3.0.1 released

    David Smith
    17 May 2013 | 11:38 am
    The R core group has quickly followed up with a patch to R version 3. Announced yesterday, R 3.0.1 (code name: "Good Sport") improves serialization performance with big objects, improves reliability for parallel programming and fixes a few minor bugs. (You can find the complete list of changes in the NEWS file.) The source distribution and Windows and Linux binaries are available for download now from your local mirror, and the Mac binary will follow soon. The R core group continues to develop R version 3, and more patches can be expected over the coming year. Revolution R…

  • Revolution Newsletter: May 2013

    David Smith
    17 May 2013 | 9:31 am
    The most recent edition of the Revolution Newsletter is out. The news section is below, and you can read the full May edition (with highlights from this blog and community events) online. You can subscribe to the Revolution Newsletter to get it monthly via email. Gaming Analytics FTW! Join us on 13Jun13 at 10:00 AM PDT for our webinar with Bill Grasso from Osolog, LLC. He’ll be discussing how gaming companies are using predictive analytics to gain insight into how players behave and to apply that knowledge to reduce churn and increase monetization opportunities. If you are a digital…

  • Social Network Analysis at New Frontiers in Computing 2013

    Joseph Rickert
    16 May 2013 | 11:29 am
    by Joseph Rickert This past Saturday, the New Frontiers in Computing Conference (NFIC 2013), held at Stanford University, explored the theme: Social Network Analysis: It’s Who You Know. The speakers were a well-chosen, eclectic lot who covered a remarkable array of issues in less than a full day. Ian Hersey, former CTO of Attensity spoke on Lessons from Large-Scale Social Analytics. Michael Wu, Chief scientist of Lithium Technologies, provided an introduction to social network analysis and very gamely conducted a live experiment building a social network of attendee tweets during the…
 
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    iTrend Blog

  • Most popular software clients used for tweeting

    Michael Alatortsev
    2 May 2013 | 10:43 am
    Our data discovery platform has recently analyzed 7 million tweets related to Technology and Healthcare, to see what software people prefer to use when tweeting. Twitter for iPhone is the most popular choice. It is followed by “Web” (people using their web browsers to post a message), Twitter for Android, Twitterfeed, and Twitter for Blackberry (that one was a bit surprising): Top 25 most popular Twitter clients Here’s what Top 100 looks like: Twitter for iPhone 1,575,772 web 1,148,269 Twitter for Android 756,128 twitterfeed 573,741 Twitter for BlackBerry® 214,918 Tweet…

  • Visualizing #TEDMED 2013 social chatter

    Michael Alatortsev
    18 Apr 2013 | 11:06 am
    iTrend’s data discovery and social analytics platform is now available to select customers as a Technology Preview.  It includes the Pharma Edition of our data platform, geared towards pharmaceutical companies and healthcare organizations.  Healthcare interests us, so we are tracking several relevant conferences in social media to see which topic generate most interest, who the biggest social influencers are, and how people generally interact at these events. This post is focused on TEDMED 2013: http://www.tedmed.com/ The stats are based primarily on Twitter, because that’s…

  • Social media on Microsoft’s ‘Scroogled’ ads attacking Android’s data sharing

    Michael Alatortsev
    10 Apr 2013 | 7:17 pm
    Microsoft has been actively  attacking Google for its Android app store policies.  Microsoft’s point of view can be seen here: Microsoft’s official website – http://www.scroogled.com You can follow the debate on Twitter under the following tag: #scroogled Most retweets involving this hashtag are driven by the $500 Visa Gift Card offer: Bing’s #scroogle $500 Visa Gift Card contest Conversations appear to be centered around data privacy and Android store transactions: #scroogled word cloud on Twitter More specifically, some of these tweets are calling Google…

  • #nowthatcherisdead Further Underscores the Importance of Thoughtful Hashtag Selections

    Blaine Kohl
    9 Apr 2013 | 9:21 pm
    April 9 is closing. I just checked Twitter and see a Tweet from 38 minutes ago lamenting the death of Cher using the hashtag #nowthatcherisdead. There were many confirmed reports from reliable sources that Margaret Thatcher had passed. Other than Twitter, there were no reports of the death of Cher. We looked at the extent of this Twitter  conversation and its impacts resulting from the ensuing confusion around the hashtag and who had really died as well as several takeaways. One clear lesson that should be learned is to fact check before you make comments or become emotionally involved in…

  • Social Media and Brands: How did the US’s 10th Largest Company Lose Control of its Brand?

    Blaine Kohl
    8 Apr 2013 | 10:17 am
    HP, previously known as Hewlett-Packard, is a company primarily known for products such as printers and servers.  HP is also social media’s pet name for Harry Potter and HP is clearly losing the battle to Harry Potter. Today HP made an announcement under the hashtag #HPMoonshot. Good thing they tried to come up with a differentiating hashtag. Unfortunately, in many ways, it also coincided closely with the passing of Richard Griffiths. So how did HP perform? We’ll let you look at the word cloud and allow you to be the judge. OK, now let’s look specifically for the hashtags…
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