@christineptran

Facebook’s Sentiment Engine

On Sunday – Valentine’s Day, Facebook published new results from its sentiment engine, measuring if relationship status correlates with happiness. According to their analysis, it does. Read more.

These results follow from their USA Gross National Happiness Index, published in October 2009. Facebook data scientists have put together a sentiment engine which analyzes word choice in status updates. The idea, generally accepted by social psychologists, is that what we write provides a window into our “emotional and cognitive worlds.”

According to Facebook, positive words include “happy”, “yay” and “awesome,” while negative words include “sad,” “doubt” and “tragic.”  Read more about how words are collected and rated by LIWC, or the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count.  This tool was adopted by Facebook in its own research.

[If you hadn't read the report last year, It's no surprise that the happiest days fall on holidays, with Thanksgiving ranking at the top. The saddest day was January 22, 2008 - the day of the Asian stock market crash and Heath Ledger's death (really?). The second saddest was Michael Jackson's death.]

I plugged in all my Facebook status updates from November 1, 2009 to today and came up with the following analysis via LIWC:

And for good measure, here is an analysis of my tweets:

Nothing earth shattering here, but keep in mind this is one tool and I’m using the free version. (How I’m equally personable and arrogant/distant beats me!) Plus, you can’t deny the significance of this kind of data across 400 million Facebook users worldwide. Instead of knowing what people are searching for (per Google), Facebook tells us what people are thinking. This kind of information is valuable to everyone from social psychologists, to cultural anthropologists, to politicians, to marketers.

Companies should already be monitoring sentiment around their brands wherever people are talking. Facebook. Twitter. Forums. Comments. Buzz? I’m not sure what tools exist to do this well – so if you’re using one to monitor sentiment around your brand, please let me know.

Facebook currently hoards its social analytics, but you can bet that a sentiment engine will be on the market in the future.

Oh, and if you’re interested in reading more: This NY Times article discusses how a happiness index might be a better measure of “national self-worth” than economic indices.

Social Search: Intimacy Over Authority

I’ve been using Aardvark, a social search engine, since last summer. I use it a good number of times every week, and continue to be amazed by the quality and speed of answers, and the helpfulness of strangers in my extended social network.

What is social search? It’s search that relies on your social graph. Whereas, in a traditional search engine the challenge is to find the right link, in Aardvark it’s to find the right person. Their analogy: Google follows the “library paradigm of information retrieval,” Aardvark is like the “village paradigm.” In Google the algorithms determine authority (PageRank), in Aardvark the algorithms determine intimacy.

Aardvark works best when you ask questions of a highly contextualized or subjective nature – the average question on Aardvark is 18.6 words compared to 2.2-2.9 words on a web search. Questions and answers are received via IM, email, and SMS – modeling the real-world process of asking questions to friends.

Here’s a look at the type of questions asked on Aardvark:

Today, Aardvark blogged about a conference paper they submitted, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine. For inquiring users like myself, it was an incredible look at how a social search engine works.

How It Works (Roughly)

A crawler and indexer indexes “topics,” which are submitted by users or extracted from users’ Facebook page, Twitter messages, Facebook news feed items, or messages sent to other users.

Aardvark creates an index with scored lists of user IDs and topic IDs. When a user enters a question into their chat window, for example, a question is sent to Aardvark’s conversation manager, which sends the question to its question analyzer, which issues a routing suggestion request to the routing engine, which searches the index and social graph of suggested user IDs.

What’s Interesting

Users aren’t just ranked by topic knowledge, but also by the “degree of social connectedness and profile similarity.” Profile similarity is determined by demographic data and social graph overlap, and also by matching vocabulary, chattiness, speed, verbosity, and politeness (e.g. Thanks!). Aardvark has found that if users have friends in common or match demographically, for instance, the questioner is more likely to receive a good answer. Also, if a user has friends with expertise in the topic, than Aardvark will judge that user as having higher expertise.

I continue to be surprised by the quality of answers I get every time I use Aardvark. I once asked how to create a pivot table in Excel, only I didn’t know it was called a pivot table and had to explain in detail what I wanted to do. I received a step-by-step answer from a gentlemen in San Francisco (read the entire thread).

According to Aardvark, users answer questions from strangers because it’s a “very gratifying experience: they’ve been selected by Aardvark because of their expertise, they were able to help someone who had a need in the moment, and they are frequently thanked for their help by the asker.”

The Impact

As of October 2009, more than 90,000 users have created accounts on Aardvark from just 2000 users in March. Over half of its users have asked a question on Aardvark and the average volume of questions per day is 3,167.2. The numbers are not insignificant and indicate a need that hasn’t been satisfied very well up to this point.

Social search like Aardvark helps tease out information from the right people – people in our social graphs who have some degree of connectedness and profile similarity to us. It’s the recognition of intimacy as just as important, if not more, than authority.

Why I’m Not Using Facebook Connect

I’ve got a pretty public profile these days. You can find me on this blog of course, plus here (Facebook), here (LinkedIn), and here (Twitter).  I’ve cultivated all these public profiles over the past 2-3 years. The reason I spend so much time doing this is for the same reasons most people do: reach out to friends, make professional contacts, keep up-to-date with the industry, create a personal brand, and (previously) job seek.

This is what I tell all my friends who haven’t quite crossed the chasm yet.  Though most I know – and this seems to be true for the general public – aren’t comfortable having such public personas.  Most are willing to share and comment, but not yet produce and curate.

I’ve been thinking more about our online identities recently, especially in light of Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments on evolving social norms. While Facebook has an obvious interest in reducing privacy and creating a more open platform, it’s true that high schoolers today are growing up in an age where most of what they consume and communicate is online. We’re true to ourselves (generally) when we interact with people in our physical world, and this is mimicked to an increasingly large extent in our digital world. Some of us are already comfortable being ourselves online. In fact, we seek that authenticity, those honest interactions, and real human-to-human relationships in our everyday online activities.

In real life we can craft different personas in different environments. At the very least, there’s the “work” Christine, the “home” Christine, the “social” Christine.

Online, there’s the “public” Christine – which to date includes articles I’ve written, my blog, my Twitter/Linkedin profile, and public information on my Facebook page. Then there’s the private Christine – the rest of the information on my Facebook.

And that’s how I like to keep it. Online, we need both our public and our private personas.

Meanwhile, it sounds as if Zuckerberg and Facebook are heading in a different direction: “We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.”

While I agree that social norms are evolving, there’s always going to be a desire for people to keep some information private – that’s definitely the “home” Christine and to a large part the “social” Christine. This is why Facebook took off in the first place – it was a closed network of university students who felt safe sharing their personas with peers.

Recently I made my Facebook settings even more private. I also removed dozens of fan pages I had joined, recognizing that the affiliation was part of my public online identity. I’ve also stopped using Facebook Connect, despite its promise that users “take their Facebook identity, network, and privacy settings with them as they browse and interact with the rest of the Web.” Read their terms of service, as well as this earlier ReadWriteWeb article and this more recent CNET article to understand more.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to blog and send out Tweets – these are facets of my identity that I opted in to make public. I’ve already noticed sites using a “Twitter Connect,” and this is a feature I’ll gladly use (if only OpenID had taken off). And, it appears that we’ll be seeing a lot more of “Twitter Connect” in 2010.

Engagement and Influence Through Sharing

This isn’t exactly what our parents had in mind when they told us to share.

ShareThis are the makers of this ubiquitous button:

Last month, they released some interesting data about sharing, as a social engagement activity online. Here are some numbers:

• ShareThis saw a 200% increase in shares per page view across their 125,000 sites in 2009.
• Sharing is accounting for as much as one third of the traffic driven by traditional search.
• Sites in ShareThis’ network see 50% more engagement, or page views, from sharing over search.

Tim Schigel of ShareThis writes: “We believe your friends and family across all social networks should be your filter for the web, and influence isn’t just made by a few, it’s created by everyone who shares. What all this adds up to is a picture of sharing as a growing piece of the social Web.”

Read the entire blog post here: The Value of Sharing: Social Engagement.

While many of us are beginning to take sharing for granted, it’s a key online activity and behavior. Sharing is important to those who share (builds influence) and those who receive (benefits from social filter).

Altimeter Group’s Engagement Pyramid includes sharing as one of five key online behaviors. Later this month, we’ll be hosting a webinar focused on understanding “socialgraphics,” or how and where customers engage online, which includes a review of the Engagement Pyramid. For now, you can take a quick peak at the Pyramid here – see Slide 29. Details about the webinar will be announced soon on the Altimeter Group blog.

I’m Thankful for Google

This is coming a couple days late, but a book review in the NY Times today inspired me to express my thanks for Google during this Thanksgiving weekend. The review is for Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, by Ken Auletta. A little sensationalistic wouldn’t you say?!

photo credit: Marcin Wichary

While every media exec in North America thinks Google is “voracious…has gargantuan ambitions, it’s too rich, it’s too smug, it makes money off of OPC – other people’s content,” there’s no denying that it’s made the world a better place from a consumer’s standpoint.

So, in the spirit of Michael Arrington’s recent #iamthankfulfor-esque ode to Apple, here’s why I’m thankful for (and how I use) Google:

• For search that works
• For a clean search page, with an occasional dose of personality
• For web-based email with threaded conversations, labels, and tons of fun stuff in labs
• For integrating chat right into email
• For an affordable (even free) small business office suite in the cloud (Calendar, Docs)
• For maps that look good
• For alerts delivered to my inbox every evening
• For news and blog search
• For image search
• For Blogger (which I happily used before WordPress and Posterous)
• For the range of time-wasting cute pet videos to productivity-enhancing self-help videos on YouTube
• For Picasa which is the easiest and best integrated photo management app imho (if only for Facebook integration though)
• For lengthy previews of books
• For mobile maps on my iPhone
• For a comprehensive suite of analytics and webmaster tools
• For innovating geolocation with Latitude, which I’m slow to adopt but like the idea of
• For a phone number and voicemail service which transcribes my messages
• For Chrome, which isn’t available on Mac yet, but for which I’m eagerly awaiting
• For turn by turn maps on Android, which I won’t be using anytime soon, but which is cool nonetheless
• For trying to maintain its “Don’t be evil” ethos, despite being the biggest brand in the world and all indications that this is becoming less and less possible

Update: I forgot one! For helping me save on my monthly phone bills with SMS through Google Talk.

Social News Reading a la Digg and More

There was an article in CNET yesterday which made this interesting statement about popular social news site, Digg:

“As a news-sharing destination it’s been eclipsed by both Facebook and Twitter.”

Now I’m no fan of Digg (Read: it’s for boys), but I find it hard to believe that we’re getting more of our news from Facebook. And while, Facebook may be heading in that direction eventually, I also wouldn’t call Facebook a news-sharing destination just yet. Unless you count the news feed as, well, news.

Anyway, I like what Jay Adelson of Digg said in the CNET article: “I think that the sophisticated publisher understands the difference between sharing within a social network, sharing on Twitter, and sharing on Digg.”

I may not like Digg, but I can understand why its demographic keeps returning to the site. By the way, Digg has more traffic than the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. See this chart, by way of Jeremiah Owyang.

My favorite news source, Hacker News, is similar to Digg and another great example of how news is becoming an increasingly social experience. On Hacker News, I’m able to share with and read news and commentary from people I trust, in an area I’m passionate about. Repeat: News and commentary from people I trust. When I log onto the site, I expect a reasonable share of content that interests me. Similar to Digg, links are submitted and up- or downvoted. Though, what really sets Hacker News apart are the substantive comments made by the community. (FWIW, all news sites should consider adding up- or downvotes to increase the quality of comments).

Likewise, Twitter is a great source of news for me. It may just be a quick scan, but it’s a great way to see what else people are reading. Since I choose who I follow (and have organized people into topical areas), news reading through Twitter is both personalized and social.

Now, Instapaper, if only you’d make it easier to do all of this on the go!

A Personally Curated, Mobile Newspaper

A couple weeks ago, I happily joined the iPhone bandwagon (finally!).

One of my favorite apps so far is Instapaper, which allows me to save articles to my iPhone. Any time I come across an interesting article or blog post I don’t have time to read, I simply click on a “Read Later” bookmarklet. Viola! The article is saved to my iPhone, in readable format for convenient mobile reading.

My new morning routine is to visit SF Gate, New York Times, TechMeme, and Hacker News. Open every interesting article in a new tab, and click “Read Later.” Within minutes, I have an extremely personalized newspaper which I read on my commute, while I wait in line for lunch, or any other period of downtime.

Smart phones may not be ubiquitous yet, but they will be – and this is how many of us will consume our daily news in the future. Mobile news reading offers convenient, extremely targeted, personally curated content. And for now, without the ads and all the extra noise.

I hope Instapaper adds Twitter and Facebook integration, tagging, and the ability to share a feed of curated content with others.

By the way, this recent Wired article names Instapaper as iPhone’s killer app. The first Wired article I read about Instapaper, before I got my iPhone, is here.

Enterprise 2.0 is Sexy, Ahem, Social

Yesterday I dropped by the Enterprise 2.0 Exhibit Hall at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It was free to the general public, and included access to keynotes and a free drink!

What’s great about free expos is that I can check out demos of the latest technologies. In this case, I’ve been curious about Enterprise 2.0 tools because I’ve always worked in small organizations. We never had a huge need for collaboration and community platforms because our teams comprised of 3, maybe 5. I’d simply turn towards my coworker and say “Hey.” On the other hand, we also didn’t have an awareness of what was available.

What did I come away with?

• Service providers and platforms ranged from highly established, robust, and expensive (Jive) to more upstart, narrowly focused, and cheap (or free) (SocialCast).
• I was surprised that so many large enterprises were using 2.0 tools.  Client lists for Jive and Yammer were particularly impressive.  Enterprise isn’t as old-fashioned as I thought.
• After talking to several service providers, their offerings all started to sound the same.  The big distinctions for me were credibility (as gleaned through presentation and client list), and I hate to say it, design.  Despite being customizable, some platforms had a core design which was more pleasing to my eye.  For instance, I really liked PBworks, a collaboration platform, which was clean and intuitive.  Jive was also very sleek.
• Honestly, it’s still hard for me to understand how companies benefit from internal use of microblogging tools. A Yammer exhibitor offered: information-sharing and building a knowledge base.  Socialcast added that social analytics behind microblogging reveal which employees are “periphal players, connectors, or brokers.”
• My favorite platform was PBworks, not just because it was eye-pleasing.  It had the most useful applications for me, such as, collaborative workspaces, chat, and conference calls.  Check out their webinars here.

I imagine that enterprises are eager to tackle the silo effect.  Social tools seem like an obvious way to open discussion, while improving employee morale.

If anybody out there is using any of these tools, I’d love to hear about your experience.