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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".
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!
Umm... because they're analyzing it?
Aggregating RSS feeds based on keywords is easy. Separating them into positive and negative comments, and separating useful feedback from random spouting off, is a lot harder, especially in software.
RSS requires a source that provides the RSS feed. Some RSS aggregators do screen-scraping and such to aggregate data from various sources that don't directly support RSS. Most of these, however, need to know quite a bit about a specific non-RSS web site and how it formats its data before they can do much with it.
The idea here seems to be for the tool to do a search to find all the blogs (and maybe web sites in general) that cover your chosen subject matter, and then have enough "smarts" to do screen-scraping (or something on that order) to provide you with an aggregation on all of them without requiring a lot of prior knowledge about the site and its formatting.
--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Thank you.
It's another step towards the semantic web.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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.
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