NetBase: Insight Delivered

The exponential growth of online information is truly mind-boggling. Everyday there are almost 50 million tweets on Twitter, not to mention 60 million status updates on Facebook. And don’t get me started on trying to keep up with my favorite blogs on a regular basis.

Bruce Sterling got it precisely right when he said, “Ultimately no human brain, no planet full of human brains, can possibly catalog the dark, expanding ocean of data we spew. […] We won’t be surfing with search engines any more. We’ll be trawling with engines of meaning.”

As the social media explosion changes society, businesses that can tap-in to authentic conversations online and extract real value, real insight, will own the marketplace. It all started with monitoring social media channels, then came the buzz around listening. For us, UNDERSTANDING is the sea change.

Instead of merely looking at raw data, companies need to quickly understand “what,” “why,” and  ”how” to get to the heart of consumers’ opinions, needs, and emotions. Tom O’Brian makes an interesting distinction between monitoring and going beyond in a recent blog post where he defines each in the following way:

Brand Monitoring: Tracking online brand mentions on a daily basis for PR, operations and customer service outreach.

Brand Research: Analyzing naturally occurring online categories of conversation to better understand why people do what they do, the role of brands in their lives and the product, branding and communications implications for brand owners.

He calls it Brand Research, we think it is part of something broader which we call social media understanding and it’s helping our clients unlock the potential of digital information. It’ll be interesting to see how other companies get on board and where it goes from here. What offerings have you seen around understanding?

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