A new software engine that crawls through blogs, forums and instant messages to eavesdrop on teen conversations online, is providing marketers, movie studios and even politicians with detailed, instant insight into the buzz about their products and competitors.
“Because we’re tracking it in real time, we pick up on the conversational trend lines and edginess with what the kids are talking about,” said Jeffrey Greene, CEO of parent company Echometrix.
The company, based on Long Island, N. Y., started FamilySafe, an Internet security program that monitors and analyzes everything a child does online and sends his or her parents a text message alert about anything alarming, Mr. Greene said.
Echometrix launched Pulse on June 29, and while other companies do similar social-media monitoring, it claims to be the first real-time web tool focused on a teen audience. Pulse listens in on 180 teen blogs and forums, Mr. Greene said, as well as the instant message conversations of about 150,000 teens — including some Canadians — whose parents have installed the company’s FamilySafe software.
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Doesn’t that make you feel safer?
I’m not surprised, Mac. The technology has been there for quite sometime now.
The only people who don’t know about it are the “old farts”.
Text mining. Old. You’d be surprised what one can learn about a website. Inquire within, Jack
A great many spammers use a variant of text mining to locate and collect active links… especially email links…