Marketers Scan Blogs For Brand Insights

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Paying tens of thousands of dollars to companies that scan blogs helps companies decide on products and advertising, the Wall Street Journal reports. For example, the practice helped U.S. Cellular better understand prospective teenage customers: 'Using technology from Umbria Communications, a Boulder, Colo., company that aims to identify demographic groups online based on their speech patterns and discussion topics, WPP's G Whiz concluded that teens were really anxious about exceeding their cellular minutes, often because parents make them pay if they talk too much. The teens also resented being ambushed by incoming calls that pushed their minutes up. U.S. Cellular says that led U.S. Cellular to offer unlimited call me minutes.' Also of note: Intelliseek's Pete Blackshaw 'says companies used to dismiss vocal complaints from one or two consumers as an aberration. But now, they have to pay attention because now those complainers may have blogs. '"

Comments

3rd Marketing/Tracking story - IN A ROW?!?!

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

C'mon slashdot - this is the 3rd one in a row, with little content and a lot of hype and flaming to come.

If the article had contained a SHRED of tech info, like how they hash l33tspeak, or why anyone would listen to whiny teenage messageboards, then it would be something.

As it stands, any idiot who would spend money to find out what people think through blogs is as good as broke anyway. There are too many trolls out there for this to work any better than focus groups. Next.....

Companies scanning newsgroups

[johnnyb]

I know of companies who scan newsgroups to find out how people are using their products. They have a news server and do big regex searches on every message that comes in to see if anybody is saying anything about them, and repost the ones mentioning their brand or brand-related items to internal newsgroups that they can pick up.

Re:Do me a favour.

[puzzled]

Those who cut are generally no more suicidal than anyone else who is depressed - they're just so out of touch with their feelings that physical pain is the only way 'the pain' gets out. Had a friend that did this in college - its been twenty years, he is still whacky, but not in the least bit dead.