Why Sentiment Analysis Can’t Work And Why It’s A Damned Good Thing!

Dominique Lahaix, CEO of eCairn

This is a guest blog post from Dominique Lahaix, CEO of eCairn. eCairn Inc. (@eCairn) is a privately held software technology company, founded in October 2006 that specializes in community and influencers marketing. Headquartered in Los Gatos, California, Dominique (@Dominiq) and other company founders have a cumulative experience of 50+ years in e-marketing, knowledge engineering, collaborative filtering, linguistics, software development and software engineering at well-known companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Xerox, eBay and Motorola.

Let’s start with an example.

Imagine you work for Dell and you have to rate the following conversations to be examples of positive, neutral or negative sentiment:

• HP is good.
• Dell is good, but I still prefer HP.
• The new Dell PC is good but the previous one worked better.
• The new Dell PC is good but I miss the look of the previous one.
• HP works great but I hate them.
• Dell works great but I hate them.
• Dell is as good as HP.
• HP and Dell are the same crap, maybe Dell a little bit less.
• HP and Dell are nice entry-level products.
• Dell is good if you can afford it.
• Dell is good but exclusive.
• I would only recommend Dell’s PC to small businesses.
• Dell is the Dom Perignon of netbooks.
• Apple is to Dell what Saint Amour is to Beaujolais Nouveau.
• I worked too much on my Dell last night and I got sick looking at the screen.
• Dell is only good for gaming.
• HP is like it was in the Packard’s time.
• HP is like what it was in Carly’s time.
• No wonder why the Dell stock is going south.
• I love HP (from HP’s PR agency or Director).
• I hate HP (from an employee recently fired).
• A tweet repurposing the one above without any additional comment.

Hard to rate isn’t it? These are fairly standard sentences, not corner cases. There is no irony and no borderline use of language, but it just shows that:

Live Podcast: Featured Guest Marissa Louie, CEO of HeroEx

Marissa Louie

I had the good fortune to meet Marissa Louie of HeroEx as part of the process of becoming a panelist at next Thursday’s Social Media Marketing Conference in San Francisco (#SMMSF) and quickly came to like her smart, entrepreneurial spirit.

If you don’t already know about HeroEx.com, check it out. It’s in alpha, but delivers almost any item under 25 pounds in 1 hour or less in San Francisco. For those of us who remember (and relished!) the Kozmo.com days, you have to check it out.

In addition to her current venture, Marissa previously founded AD-Village, an ad network optimizer and aggregator. I’ll ask her about all that, as well as Her expertise is in online marketing, sales, supply chain management and logistics, and technology systems.

One ways he is savvy is in media coverage – Marissa will be in the August issue of SHAPE Magazine and has been featured on ABC, CBS, Forbes, BusinessWeek, TechCrunch, The Next Web, Bub.blicio.us, GQ Korea, and more.

Don’t miss the program archive here:

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Preview Charlene Li’s New Book “Open Leadership”

Charlene Li

Open Leadership, Click to download chapter one

Back in February we were lucky enough to have Altimeter Group‘s founder Charlene Li on my program, The A-List [archive].

If you had a chance to listen to the program then, you heard Charlene discuss her then-upcoming book. And now the book is out – Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead – and selling well on Amazon and other outlets as a top business aide!

Click on the book’s image to read a preview of the book.

Congrats, Charlene on yet another success!

Live Podcast: Featured Guest Charlene Li, Founding Partner, Altimeter Group and Co-Author Groundswell

Charlene Li

Charlene Li is a legend, a young one, but a legend nonetheless.

In 6 months she’s created a new breed of business with her consulting company, Altimeter Group.

In that time, she’s also written a new book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, out May 10th and remained a popular and powerful figure in Web 2.0 business strategy.

And she’s a lovely person, too!

We touch on many of these topics and more on her appearance on The A-List podcast. Listen to the archive:

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Everybody’s Doing It*, So Why Don’t We? (*it = social media)

I’m exciting to be moderating a great panel on Social Media and business Tuesday, February 16th from 6-9 PM. And I’m calling for your questions now (tweet in to @jennifered)!

The question?: To “go social” or not? And should we still be asking that question?

With San Francisco and Silicon Valley leading the world in web innovation and many considering our area the epicenter of all things social media, why are Bay Area companies still so reluctant – as much as those in the Midwest – to engage in the social web? And what about the original internet success story: the porn industry? It’s not thriving as much as you may think. So are companies that are reluctant to ‘go social’ making the right decision?

We’ve assembled a clever and varied panel for a provocative discussion from several different perspectives: big business, non-profits, small to medium size business, and a very specific ‘alternative’ industry.

[Please get your tickets now – there is limited seating and this event will sell out!]

Connecting with Customers, Bringing Business and Brands Alive

Richard Binhammer, Photo By: Brian Solis

This is a guest blog post from Richard Binhammer is the Senior Manager, Corporate Affairs at Dell. Richard might be best-known simply by his Twitter handle, @RICHARDatDELL. Some of my A-List podcast guests described Dell’s early efforts to deal with the advent of social media discourse as ‘ignoring it,’ while still others said they had their ‘head in buried in the sand’ – but all point to them as an example of a company who has course corrected and is now reaping the benefits of doing social media ‘right.’ Richard is at the heart of shifting perception of Dell from ‘hate’ to ‘great’ (case in point: Richard’s T-shirt in the photo, left). Join the conversation at Dell here.

It used to be that brands were based on presumed or understood values. Our interactions with a brand were not much more than an affinity based on transactions we made. Today, brand affinity and values run much deeper. Social media is bringing those formerly “static” brand values and promises to life.

Social media opens the doors for companies and their brands to have more lively and active relationships with customers, ones that allow us to interact in real time and breathe life into the brand. By connecting people in business with the people who consume our products and services, customers are closer than ever to what were thought of as far-off distant corporations. More than bringing a customer-focus to our businesses, connecting online is like having customers as colleagues and walking the halls of the corporation every day.

Whether it is a customer blog post, comments on a company blog, interactions with Twitter followers or Facebook fans, social media not only empowers the customer, it brings the focus for any business right where it should be… the connections between it and its customers.

Live Podcast: Featured Guest Stowe Boyd, International Authority on Social Tools and Futurist

Stowe Boyd, By Brian Solis

This week on The A-List, I am excited to welcome Stowe Boyd, international authority on social tools and futurist.

With the iPad hype this week, it seems like the perfect time to discuss the tools that run on our digital devices – new and old.

In addition to his other accomplishments, Stowe is launching a series of webinars, is the president of the Microsyntax.org non-profit, and director of the related 301Works.org initiative of the Internet Archive and is developing a conference with Jeff Pulver called Social Business Edge.

There’s much to talk about!

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Live Podcast: Featured Guest Seth Godin, Writer, Speaker, Agent of Change and Author of the New Book Linchpin

Charlie Rose with Seth Godin at MIXX

Seth Godin is our very special guest this week. He’s on a web tour to discuss his new book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? We’ll talk about the book’s release on Tuesday, how Seth defines his role in society at large, what keeps him writing – and much more.

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Live Podcast: Featured Guest Dave Morgan, CEO Simulmedia

Dave Morgan

The A-List is back and better than ever!

After a rather long winter’s nap – following our coverage of LeWeb conference – we return with Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia (dontcha just love the name?).

The company, which launched in March last year, aimed to improve the impact of TV program promotions by lifting the effectiveness of their tune-in programming spots. But how, especially  in an increasingly on-demand world?

We’ll ask Dave, whose imense success includes developing and selling TACODA and Real Media. Listen to the archive here:

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Events: Catalyzing Social Media Campaigns

Cassandra Phillipps

This is a guest post by Cassandra Phillipps, an event producer for the Bay Area startup community. She produces FailCon, co-produces Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, and production manages SF Beta, SF MusicTech Summit and Finance4Founders. She also keeps a blog on upcoming startup events and event advice at webwallflower.com You can follow her on Twitter @webwallflower. She has been a featured guest on The A-List podcast.

As the economy improves, more companies have been approaching me asking about the costs associated with producing a conference or a series of evening panels, and what the benefits would be for them. It’s as if something in their entrepreneurial brains tells them this is a good step for their businesses, but they just aren’t sure why.

Events Increase the Power of Social Media

As social media grows and connects businesses, communities, and individuals on a global scale, the time given for in-person interactions dwindles. While I 100% endorse companies using twitter to connect with customers, or LinkedIn to talk with clients, there will never be a stronger way to develop a loyal bond with your users and community than through events. SnarkMarket puts it well: “The great virtue of events today … is that their value seems durable in a way that the value of super-abundant copies of digital media does not. They pro vide ’embod i ment,’ to use Kevin Kelly’s taxonomy – and that’s some thing you can still charge for.” Done right, events can work with social media to empower and engage users on a smaller but more effective scale.