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IBM Announces "Blog-Spotting" Software
notesdude writes to tell us InternetNews is reporting that IBM has announced new "Blog-Spotting" software that will allow the monitoring of blogs, wikis, news feeds, consumer review sites, newsgroups, and other community-generated content. From the article: "People can share and spread opinions faster than ever before and that's accelerated the impact of public opinion on businesses"
...software that will allow the monitoring of blogs, wikis, news feeds, consumer review sites, newsgroups, and other community-generated content..
Great just what I need to fill those empty hours between my wife, kids, kids activities, work, writing proposals for more work, graduate studies, my property, my animals, and my hobbies.
I just abandon that huge waste of time I call sleep so that I can stay current on my Blog-Spotting.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
This looks like an extension of existing "brand watching" programs that have been around for a year or two. The main difference appears to be automation. AFAIK, existing programs have used some sort of search to find references to a brand, and then humans have looked at the newsgroup/forum/blog/whatever posts to determine the level of positive/negative commentary, look for useful information (or for potential defamation), etc. IBM's main addition seems to be the software to analyze it all.
Actually, this is probably a lot easier with blogs than with forums, since so many blogs provide RSS or ATOM feeds and there's a huge feed ping/search/index infrastructure in place with sites ranging from Ping-o-Matic to Syndic8 to Feedster and Technorati. So the search part is practically off-the-shelf.
Let the lawsuits begin....
Yes, you too can now easily track all those slamming your product, no matter how much it might deserve public scorn. Have your lawyer on speed dial, because it's time to stop that pesky public from interfering with your business model by commenting on such silly things as "quality."
I'd like to see their "blog spotting software" used in conjuction with search engines so that I can NOT find blogs. They could either work with the big search guys, or incorporate it into a dekstop search client. Either way, I know that there'd be a ton of people such as myself who would use it to avoid the glut of crappy fake-journalist blogs.
I don't respond to AC's.
This reminds me of something...
If you can spot it, you can spam it.
i.e Ikea uses Blogspotter (or it's open-source alternative Spogblotter), finds any blog that mentions Ikea, and likkity-split everyone who visits these blogs can read about the best deals on ottoman's "only at Ikea SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY".
they wrote a RSS feed reader?
Okay, I went through TFA very quickly, but how does this differ from a simple RSS feed?
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Sounds to me a whole lot like RSS just from IBM. RSS has been around a while and works pretty good. For those who don't know:
RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way.
Yes, public opinion can affect business more rapidly than ever. That should be motivation for companies to improve, not for developers to create products to PREVENT public opinion. Man, this world is getting sad, sad, sad!
This will help disseminators of dissent to stay once step ahead of oppressive censors in countries like Iran and China. Those guys are playing whack-a-mole and this product will just make the moles move faster.
..... Some company will buy this software to help it hunt down blogs made by employees like Mini Microsoft for example.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
"People can share and spread opinions faster than ever before and that's accelerated the impact of public opinion on businesses"
I'm finding it difficult to hear myself think in the mad clamour of opinions rattling around the web. At least on /. most of us are techies who might know what were talking about but if you listen to every opinion - well, as the old saying goes, opinions are like assoles, everyone has got one and there mostly full of shit.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
This must be what /. uses to get all their news from blogs!
This message will self-destruct in 5, 4, 3...
So how smart is this software really? Do certain words trigger it to adjust a combined "opinion score" for a product or company? If so, what's to stop a competitor from creating a series of blogs that say nothing but "I hate IBM's (insert new product here)" to make it appear as if it's received a negative response from consumers?
My current search problem is having to sift through all the sites that duplicate wikipedia content.
Also, sites have gotten better at being able to fool google with non relevant terms.
Why do you assume that the opinions being expressed are useful and informed?
I would say it is just as likely that it is an utterly uninformed opinion from someone with little understanding of the facts. Like people endlessly writing about how difficult to use Linux is.
Why would you ever assume that because it is simple and easy to broadcast your opinions to the entire planet that you actually have anything worth saying?
Funny, RSS is already doing this for me. Thanks, Big blue...
Its intelligent design...
Of course Windows could be used as the counter argument.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition - Joins hand in confusing all the developers around the world. Cheers IBM!
- Sh!t
It seems to me that a blog is (usually) a page put up by someone who thinks his ideas are so important that we'll overlook the fact that he can't spel or grammer.
Recently, I was treated to the idea that Wikipedia (the canonical source of non-canonical information on the Internet) is going to be dead-treed and sent to Africa. On the 'net, its lack of authority is considered acceptable because its defenders say nobody should rely on it exclusively. What happens in the bush? If we were shipping substandard pharmaceuticals to Africa there'd be moral outrage, but substandard info is apparently OK.
Slashdot? Not news for nerds anymore. Witness the posting counts: They're highest on the non-nerdy posts (which just keep coming). Why do I need ID from every angle on /. when it's on the front page of CNN? But put up an article on routers and DNS, and it's 80 mostly uninformed posts.
Sturgeon's Law needs to be revised: Now 98% of everything is crap. IBM seems to be building a crapfilter and connecting its users to the wrong output.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
This is silly. All you really need to do is take slashdot, have a topic for whatever it is you are interested in and open up the submit queue (no more "Rejected" blues). Then sit back and watch tens of thousands of bored geeks sift the relevant information from the internet and post it.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Maybe blogs have finally reached the status of drugs, ala Trainspotting
Well, i'm a n00b here at /. as far as posting goes, but here goes:
Isn't keeping an eye on the big bussiness a good thing? The easier it is for people to spread the word on bussinesses and their tactics, i imagine the more "power" people would have on the consumer market. Granted this softwere could be used as posted above to create negative responses to products, but at the same time we could more easily watch blogs about company actions and polocies. I know I for one am tired of $3/gal gas costs just cause nobody bothers to put heat on the oil companies. The more information people have at thier disposal about the companies that shaft us everyday, the more we'll hear people raise chaos about issues that need attention. Let the n00b flamming begin.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
It doesn't have to be used that way. If I ran a company, i'd like to know about potential problems before they became major public relations disasters. Legitimate complaints about the company's products and practices are valuable information. You can't fix a problem if you don't know that it exists.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
organizations recognize that many employees may feel the same way but may not communicate it overtly, so a balance has been struck for organizations that deploy this system: they trust employees to self-percieve, much different than the most conservative of command and control structures. the management crux of such a system is to throttle messaging so risk is mitigated.. IBM's ceo did have a chat session that had trolls etc, but in the end the openess resonated with employees...
Bullshit at the speed of light!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Hopefully there's some way to filter out sites, because not every blog out there knows what he/she is talking about. There's a lot of knee-jerk talk for product previews, especially in the gaming community. For instance, if I were to look at blogs talking about Zelda for the Gamecube two weeks before it came out, about half the blogs would consist of, "Zelda? More like Celda!!!1! ROFL!!"
Blog spots you!
"Blog-Spouting" Software...
I'm pretty sure you could make randomized blog-entry generator, and its content could be comparable to a number of real blogs out there.
faster == better
But if you consid... Oh wait! Look how tiny my cellphone is.
I already monitor keyword searches of such sites as Technorati, Google Blog Search, IceRocket, and
BlogPulse using an RSS reader (Sharpreader, in my case).
IBM's service sounds like it is essentially dong the same thing, and then summarizing the results
a bit. I don't really see any significant added value over using these existing services.
if i had an employer he could get a piece of software to spy on whether i call him a dick or not with no effort.
"tired of trawling through company employees websites by hand? weed out thye fascists quick with autosnitch!"
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Just to help IBM out, here are a few I'm familiar with - your mileage may vary:
FeedDemon - yeah, to get your $25 worth it helps to OPML and how to transform XML, but that's what I like about it.
Straw - for when I'm in the Gnome .
BlogLines - web-native but with an API to die for.
AmphetaDesk - around for a while, great if you like shooting your foot of in Perl.
NewsGator - for Outlook - still, you can tweak it to feed event-extended RSS into your task calendar.
rss2Email - for when my Knoppix install has nothing better to do.
SharpReader - not as good as FeedDemon, but less expensive. There are a few others, the WikiPedia has a good handle on that - point is, how is the IBM tool different than all of the above? Are they not going to use RSS or ATOM feeds?
--- have you healed your church website?
It doesn't have to be used that way. If I ran a company, i'd like to know about potential problems before they became major public relations disasters. Legitimate complaints about the company's products and practices are valuable information. You can't fix a problem if you don't know that it exists.
Not that I don't agree with you, but it is exactly that sort of attitude that is the reason you are posting on Slashdot and not in some corporate board room.:/
I love how the web screws with everything... national borders, taxation and tariffs, censorship, copyright, "local standards" etc. Lots of existing laws are tacitly based on obsolete assumptions about technology, or the way people behaved when their choices were more limited. The ability of anyone to become a publisher is screwing with the notion of publishing, of what a news organization is, and issues such as libel. If you criticize your boss or your company in a letter to your mom it's no big deal, even if she reads it to her neighbors. But if you put the same information on a website it could become a huge deal.
Some people flatly declare that anybody with a website is a publisher, period, and is therefore subject to the same rules and responsibilities as Time Warner, period. That argument would have made sense back in the days when the difficulty of becoming a publisher made it reasonable to presume a certain level of sophistication and awareness of the legal liabilities. But it's a stretch to make those same assumptions today about your aunt when she signs up on BlogSpot and starts posting away. It's far too easy for the average person to step on the wrong toes on the web.
The law should be more like a safety railing than like a minefield. It shouldn't lay traps for plain citizens honestly expressing their personal opinions. It should adjust to people's new capabilities and to the way they naturally act. IANAL and I don't know the legal definition of "damage" from other people's words, but I think it should allow for normal, natural expression on a larger scale than it probably does now, and oblige us to exercise more tolerance toward other people's public statements.
We are going to be seeing more and more cases of one person or entity attacking another in court because of things said on the Web. The outcomes of those cases will have a huge effect on our freedom to use the web to express opinions. I hope the judges and juries have the wisdom to look beyond single cases and think about the bigger picture. I really don't want the web to be a happy hunting ground for legal predators, waiting for me to make a slip and say the wrong thing so they can take away my house.
In the past, you'd have to round people up and convince them to attack the monster on the hill.
With IBM's new technology, thousands of villagers can be gathered with the click of a button. Added value to pitchfork and torch supplies through direct targeted advertisement.
boardtracker.com already does all the scanning, alerts and search etc. for forums very nicely.
They want it all in one. But more scary, they want it PER PERSON. Am I correct? /.? and articles are resleased on an hourly basis lets say? so to get the news in time I would want to scan /. every hour? 24 times a day at least? /. will get 120M extra spider hits a day :) /. but what about some silly little private blogs that can't even pay for their bandwidth? :D
I mean, they are talking about a software. Not a service. That means everyone in their own home/biz will be scanning TONS of sites/feeds all the time in order to find the little that is relevant to them? Be it brand, product, Pop star, wha'eve'..
If that is correct, if indeed each 'user' will become a little search engine, than it will be a nightmare for sites. Instead of using search engines, people will full "spider" sites on their own?
That means, lets say at least 5M people care about
Now.. maybe it is ok for
Just my 2 cents..
"From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen" - Cat Stevens
About blogs it's easy.. They are all negative ;) ;)
As for the rest, it depends.. Well, the question is, what is negative? and maybe we want to find negative posts? lets say you are customare care for a company.. you want to find negative posts about your company, no? So, in this case, finding negative posts is positive. I guess Einstein was right
"From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen" - Cat Stevens
"People can share and spread opinions faster than ever before and that's accelerated the impact of public opinion on businesses"
:)
Unless of course, you're name is SONY, in which case it just means you can ignore public opinion faster.
Greeaaat. Wikis too. The only thing lamer than blogs.
Add boardtracker to your arsenal - it scans forums and can send you alerts by email and jabber based on your keywords and also has rss feeds of course.
Should be called "IBM WEBSPHERE LITIGATION SERVICES EXPRESS" because that's what it is most likely going to be used for. Fortunate 500 squashing all us that dare to have a publicly held opinion.
Can it be used for evil? as in, can my boss use it to discover who in our company is blogging? Sounds like a powerful surveillance tool.
Just to see who the real villan is behind the various freedom fighters. MO HA HA HAHA
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
LOL I thought it was hilarious. So would blogging be for the "heavy" days if spotting is on the light days?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
...sounds like some sort of a loathesome cattle disease.
But then "blog" is hardly an appetizing word in itself.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Yes, sometimes news breaks on a blog, but mostly, it's just drivel.
This isn't a consumer "time saver." It's a weapon for corporations to police the internet.
Plug in this sort of technology and you can keep track of your blogging employeees. Are they bad-mouthing the boss? Obviously engaged in something that the company could claim as intellectual policy? Organizing a union? Busted.
This will automate the troll for IP and trademark infringments. More amusingly, though: now corporations can keep a sharp eye peeled for misbehaving customers. Bitch abour Mega-Mart's pricing or shoddy products, and you might get a Cease and Desist. Or a slander suit.
Ah, technology in the service of the powerful! How it warms the hearts of lawyers everywhere.
Damn, this aluminum beanie gets warm fast.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
There are a few companies out there that already provide a service similar to this.
"Yes, public opinion can affect business more rapidly than ever. That should be motivation for companies to improve, not for developers to create products to PREVENT public opinion. Man, this world is getting sad, sad, sad!"
Thank the profit motive of capitalism and the backward animal tendencies of the human race, both of them in combination make a wonderful world doesn't it?
Don't be fooled by their sales pitch.
An acquaintance of mine's startup company tried to do this about 5 years ago, but failed.
The idea was to do basically what IBM has announced: automated spidering of websites, in an effort to automatically gauge public opinion about a given topic.
Intended uses were: corporate image monitoring, public relations, marketing, early warning about negative public opinion, politics, etc.
The distinctive thing is that it used natural language processing, in an effort to learn the tone and emotion behind the writings it discovered. The company was founded by a linguist.
This use of language is what distinguished it from being just a generic search engine or aggregator.
Unfortunately, the company failed. I don't think the startup had enough connections to reach their target market of large corporations. There also weren't enough blogs and other easily discoverable opinionated content online back then, as blogging was not yet mainstream.
Nowadays, IBM will have better luck on both counts, of course!
And unfortunately, I now forget the name of the startup, otherwise I'd dredge up some information and try to post it here....
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
They need to track how many people find out that some products like Identity Manager is a steaming pile of crap and requires hacks and patches to keep it from barfing. Millions of dollars, years to get working and a lot of the consultants have so little training they don't even have a clue about how little the do know. The first time they do something it's OJT at the customer's expense.
The value of an opinion or comment varies greatly from recipient to recipient.
It sickens me how ignorant some people can be towards you. After all, you are amongst the leading researchers in this field. You are at the top of the game. And yet these fools still deem it necessary to consider you wrong. Frankly, I'm astounded and disgusted at their behaviour.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.