We’ve launched a nice new shiny product called Opinion Tracker. Opinion Tracker does what it says on the tin i.e. it monitors what people are thinking and saying around the net.

We track conversations around the net (in forums, communities, blogs and videos) and then analyse these to show what people are thinking and saying about specific issues - whether that’s to do with an event like the Mayoral elections, an issue like Climate Change or a business’ Corporate Reputation.

It works though a combination of technology and people power. Our technology allows us to spider the internet (across blogs, forums, social networks) and identify what people are saying about specific clusters of key words. Once this data is aggregated, our team of analysts then sample this data and process it to provide the end analysis and metrics.

The reason we’ve developed the product is because we think there’s a vast, largely untapped, resource of public opinion out there online.
The internet is a big social space where people discuss all aspects of the world and their lives. In a context very different to the controlled environment of focus groups etc, it’s possible to find out for real what people are thinking and talking about in their own environment e.g. in their blog, or in a forum. This means we can find out what 100’s or 1000’s of people are thinking, rather than 10 or so.

The product’s in beta at the moment, or rather its first product iteration, so if anyone’s got any ideas of how to improve it, or different ways to use it, do drop us a line.