Social media listening

Past, Present and Future

Me• I am Irish and live in Brussels• I co-founded Attentio with Per

Siljubergsasen at the end of 2004• Attentio is a social media listening platform

with clients across Europe• Now I run Attentio and am a director of

young companies in new media• Follow my updates @simonmc or @attentio

The premise

The increase in social media listening

is directly tied to the growth of online

social media

Prehistoric social media (1980-2000)First public dial-up Bulletin Board System by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, began February 16, 1978 in Chicago.

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, started in 1980.[1] 

Google Groups is a service from Google Inc. that supports discussion groups, including many Usenet newsgroups, based on common interests.

Users can find discussion groups related interests, either through a web interface or by email. Google Groups also includes an archive of Usenet newsgroup postings dating back to 1981[2] 

Early days

Microsoft’s first mention 1981

• The June issue of BYTE magazine has a fairly long article on XENIX by Microsoft's XENIX product manager.  Mostly, it's a standard "What's a UNIX" paper, but it also describes some of the enhancements they are adding to V7.  The most important is support; additionally, they are going to add a fair amount of hardware error recovery (bad block handling, parity and power fail interrupts, etc.), as well as record handling, shared data segments, synchronous writing, improved interprocess communications, networking, and languages:  Pascal, BASIC, 

FORTRAN, and COBOL. 

Early days

Google’s first mention 1998• If you like Rankdex's laser pinpointing of just a page or 

three, I recommend ...google.stanford.edu which uses a similar but expanded quality algorithm and a much larger index. -- Chris Mitchell The Searcher's Road Less Travelled 

Early days

Blogs• Bruce Ableson launched Open Diary in October 1998,

which soon grew to thousands of online diaries. Becoming first blog community where readers could add comments to other writers' blog entries.

• Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal in March 1999.

• Evan Williams & Meg Hourihan launched blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in February 2003)

• By 2008 there were over 100,000,000 blogs

Early days

Attentio Slide from end 2004Over 600 million Internet users, converging to general population, younger and more likely to be influencers(Source: Datamonitor)

More than 50% yearly growth online consumer shopping(Source: AC Nielsen)

Growing importance of search, e.g. Google is now indexing 3.3 Billion web pages

Usenet, the largest online discussion group community has more than 800 million posted articles(Source: Datamonitor)

More than 7,000 active online news publications, FT.com has twice the readership of Financial Times

Blogging exponential increase

1998 - 30,000

2002 – 500,000

Source: Economist

Early days

Blog sentiments for U.S. presidential candidates

1.2

1.25

1.3

1.35

1.4

1.45

1.5

1.55

1.6

25/0

1/20

04

27/0

1/20

04

29/0

1/20

04

30/0

1/20

04

31/0

1/20

04

02/0

2/20

04

03/0

2/20

04

04/0

2/20

04

05/0

2/20

04

07/0

2/20

04

09/0

2/20

04

10/0

2/20

04

12/0

2/20

04

17/0

2/20

04

19/0

2/20

04

22/0

2/20

04

24/0

2/20

04

25/0

2/20

04

27/0

2/20

04

28/0

2/20

04

George Bush President 2004 election blog good

Howard Dean President 2004 election bloggood

John Edwards President 2004 election bloggood

John Kerry President 2004 election blog good

Average of Sentiment

Date2

Query 1

Early days

If there is stuff to listen to...

Companies emerge from 2000 onwardsEarly days

More “buzz” = more applications and more stories

• 2004– US Elections– CNN partner with listening company for buzz

measurement to predict outcomes

• 2004 onwards – Superbowl– Kryptonite– Dell Hell

Early days

First European clients

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

29/0

2/20

04 -

06/

03/2

004

07/0

3/20

04 -

13/

03/2

004

14/0

3/20

04 -

20/

03/2

004

21/0

3/20

04 -

27/

03/2

004

28/0

3/20

04 -

03/

04/2

004

04/0

4/20

04 -

10/

04/2

004

11/0

4/20

04 -

17/

04/2

004

18/0

4/20

04 -

24/

04/2

004

25/0

4/20

04 -

01/

05/2

004

02/0

5/20

04 -

08/

05/2

004

09/0

5/20

04 -

15/

05/2

004

16/0

5/20

04 -

22/

05/2

004

23/0

5/20

04 -

29/

05/2

004

30/0

5/20

04 -

05/

06/2

004

06/0

6/20

04 -

12/

06/2

004

13/0

6/20

04 -

19/

06/2

004

20/0

6/20

04 -

26/

06/2

004

27/0

6/20

04 -

03/

07/2

004

04/0

7/20

04 -

10/

07/2

004

11/0

7/20

04 -

17/

07/2

004

18/0

7/20

04 -

24/

07/2

004

25/0

7/20

04 -

31/

07/2

004

01/0

8/20

04 -

07/

08/2

004

08/0

8/20

04 -

14/

08/2

004

15/0

8/20

04 -

21/

08/2

004

22/0

8/20

04 -

28/

08/2

004

29/0

8/20

04 -

04/

09/2

004

05/0

9/20

04 -

11/

09/2

004

12/0

9/20

04 -

14/

09/2

004

Centrino - Bremen

Centrino - Nürnberg

Pentium-4 - Bremen

Pentium-4 - Nürnberg

Source Google Germany Web Feature (blank)

Average of Mentions

Day

BrandRegion

Early days

Early days

• It was a tiny niche companies that sold services often had venture capital

• Ad hoc projects frequently out of experimentative budget

• Critical mass wasn’t there i.e. Not enough people are using social media

• But things were to change...

Early days

2007 and onwards

• “Here comes everybody”

• The mega social network

• Advertisements come to

social media (in a meaningful way)

• Listening industry starts to mature2007 - 2009

@SIMONMC

2007 - 2009

Business applications evolve

• Influencer spotting – Who is talking about our brand and/or area

and is INFLUENTIAL

• Campaign impact– If we do something does it create

conversations

• Reputation – How is our reputation evolving?

2007 - 2009

Customers “suck it and see”• More “free stuff”

– Blogpulse, Trendpedia, Technorati, Google Blog Search, Addictomatic, etc.

• More agencies getting requests for trial projects for listening, monitoring, measurement

• Brands discussing and developing social media campaigns

• The “Viral”2007 - 2009

2010 => today

• US market has grown “exponentially”– More US players are now multi-million biz

• Market Research taking the industry seriously i.e. “Netnography”– They have to reduce cost of data collection– Quicker and real time insight

• European market alive in UK, France, Benelux and Scandinavia (slower in Spain, Germany, Italy but emerging)

2010 ---

2010 ---

Future• Main drivers for listening

– Brand Monitoring• Similar to press clipping and media evaluation

– Social Media Research• Derives from market research i.e. Insight into consumer

behaviour

– Social CRM• Traditional CRM with extras – connected with community

management

– Social Media Marketing platforms• Integrating marketing spend, “noise”, impact etc.

2010 ---

Social Media Response Centre

2010 ---

2010 ---

Future (cont.)• The Community manager• Chief Information Officer

– Integration into Business Intelligence– Integration into CRM

• The Global Listening program– Major brands want to coordinate efforts

• Save money, get information where it is needed• May miss some local or cultural differences...

• Location based– Depends on critical mass and privacy

2010 ---

Final thoughts

• Its been around a while

• Most major brands are now listening

• Ad hoc replaced by continual, methodological listening and research– Better analytics demanded

• Companies that sell services need to explain how they get data

• There are case studies and that breeds good practice

2010 ---

More information• Follow me @simonmc or @attentio

• Email simon@attentio.com

• Ph. +32 (0) 473 670178