Michelle deHaaff

No, I haven’t become the official Attensity blogger on consumer electronics, but I am a shopper and this season the extensive list of new consumer electronics products and advertising to go with them is kind of overwhelming.  Once I made the decision that we are going to attempt to read our books on a tablet versus in the warm and cozy real-book style, I started to look for the perfect reader.  I already read the Wall Street Journal every day on my husband’s iPad2 and so far it’s been a pretty good experience, but I find iTunes to be challenging to use across computers and it seems as if the new version is extra sensitive to...

As CMOs try to figure out how social media fits into the marketing mix, there has been a lot of discussion in the marketing community about what role social media plays in outbound marketing, but many (although not all) have ignored the amazing value that social media and specifically Facebook can play when it comes to inbound feedback.  When I say not all have ignored it  – there have been some really interesting stories about brands who have leveraged Facebook and blogs to really engage customers and get their thoughts on everything from marketing campaigns to products and services.  Most of the feedback is typically...

With Google opening up a large number of invites to Google+ this week, the conversation surged about this new attempt by the Internet giant.  I created a login and had a look, like millions of other Google users in the world. It’s Google, so many of us will try. 

The second or third to market sometimes does well, sometimes doesn’t, it’s about circumstance.  Heck, Google was NOT the first search engine, but they ARE the best today. Google does have a lot of information about me and my networks to possibly make Google+ useful.  Through Gmail, they have my address book, for a while there, they could get at my Facebook friends (Facebook put an end to that -Facebook has just shut out Open X-Change tool designed to transfer Facebook friends to Google+..)  And of course, I “visit” Google everyday as my chosen search engine.

Facebook was at least second to market (MySpace being 1st) and as we all know – that worked well. The difference?  Broader...

Sentiment is a widely discussed topic in the social, market and customer analytics world.  Most vendors and buyers talk about sentiment as the “holy grail” and extremely difficult to get right. Attensity has been doing sentiment analysis for years and offers a very accurate view of sentiment (over 95% in some cases) due to our patented Exhaustive Extraction^TM approach,  BUT what we have found when working with our customers is that sentiment really DOESN’T MATTER if you can’t connect a why to it.  Why is a customer really upset or very satisfied? 

About 4 years ago a very senior executive in customer service in a large...