Apple’s buzz machine has been working overtime for past few months to create awareness, intrigue, a bit of mystique, and ultimate anticipation-in-awe surrounding the inevitable announcement of its tablet computer at a Steve Job event in Silicon Valley.  If you’re just coming out from under a rock today, just type in “Apple tablet” in Google news to muse through a few thousand articles about the product that hasn’t even been confirmed yet. Sites like Mashable have gone so far as to dedicate sections to this holy day that’s now upon us.

So over at review’d we’re always interested in what people are really saying by trying to put some numbers to some of the feelings we’re sensing.  Is it good/bad, how much of it is going on, and how strongly do people feel?

Apple was one of the first companies we started to track during early development of review’d. Recognizing the potential for confusion with, say, your granny smiths or macouns, based on what we’ve observed, it’s pretty safe to assume most of tweets with “Apple” in it are related to the company in Cupertino.

So with that, here’s a sense of what people have been saying:

Twitter Sentiment analytics of Apple Computer on tablet launch day

One thing that Apple is notorious for is having a base of über enthusiasts and brand haters. The result is typically a constant stream of polarizing comments from both camps. Just think about how passionate some Windows people still are today and don’t hesitate getting into an argument with black-attire sporting creatives with funky shoes and square-framed glasses any day of the week. But we digress… A look at the above shows a significant quantity of tweets expressing opinions (remember, review’d only tracks tweets that hint at either a positive or negative opinion, not all). The swell is evident and hints at mainstream involvement are present.

Chattiness
Chattiness is a new feature we’ve added on the development site of review’d and we thought that with a rockin’ high rating of 100% today, there’d be no better time to introduce it.  Chattiness is based on the quantity of tweets being expressed in the last 24 hours versus the previous 30 day period. Anything to the right shows you things are heating up. To the left, they’re dying down.  The confirmation is here, yes, people are jazzed up (albeit in both directions) about today’s announcement.

Here are some examples of tweets tracked by review’d in the last 24 hours to give you a sense of the playing field.

Thanks to darcyhooper and i_Karu.

On the other side, DrewsDictionary and SusanVJ.

Whether you agree that this piece of hardware has the potential to save the publishing industry and will live up to its anointed ”Jesus tablet,” that’s for time to play out. For now, the buzz is there, people are talking, and there’s not much better than your brand than that. Now, to pop some popcorn and see what happens today.

As you know, we’ve been tracking the sentiment toward Windows 7 for some time. Launched on Oct. 22 it has now had a little over a month to marinate in the marketplace. Reports abound about how well sales have been of the new Microsoft OS, but what are people really saying?

Well, the biggest takeaway is that they’re saying less. It’s the morning after as far as product launches are concerned and the conversation is dwindling. Check out this graph that shows the relationship between positive and negative tweets toward Windows 7.

30-day line graph of Windows 7 positive and negative tweets

Even while the excitement level may be dwindling, there’s some good news buried within this little graph. Overall, there’s more positive activity going on than negative.

Here’s a few more examples of the tweets that people are making:

Oh my goodness. I LOVE Windows 7!!! (So far) – by @andireid

Windows 7 is awesome. Im stoked to use it tomorrow. – by @bassplayer2008

and from the other camp:

Time to downgrade my Windows 7 from Ultimate to Professional. Fail. – by @gearvosh

Apparently to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP you first need to upgrade to Vista. Holy fail. Ridiculous. – by @samelaanderson

Warranted or not, it’s what people are saying.

Too much data can get overwhelming though, which is why a central part of review’d is the review’d score. As we mentioned briefly once before, the review’d score is our own little gauge at how well things are going over time. If people are being more positive, up it goes. More negative? Down it falls. You get the jist. So with that, we’ll let you know that the latest review’d score for past week puts Windows 7 at a 63. How does that fair? Well, to put it in perspective, Twitter darling Zappos is cruising at a 92 while State Farm is at a whopping 6.

If Windows 7 comes up over the bird this Thanksgiving, you’re now armed with a little more perspective. Does it trump all the cool offerings from Apple? That’s for you do decide.

Recognizing that teeing-up perception of the new OS is critical to its initial success, Microsoft itself decided to stoke the fires on Twitter as a part of its marketing effort.  There was the #winwin7 campaign and other attempts by Microsoft as part of its multi-faceted campaign. @rupalparekh over at AdvertisingAge (@adage) covered the moves pretty thoroughly.  So we’ve been tracking sentiment against Windows 7 for several months now.  After all we’re interested in what people are really thinking (and saying on Twitter).

So it’s with a little surprise (and reaffirmation of the importance of what we’re doing here at review’d) to see what we Microsoft has up as its home page today for launch.  Check it out:

Microsoft's home page on Oct. 22, 2009

Cheers to Microsoft for bringing users statements to the forefront!  But are they?  A couple of searches on featured tweets yielded no results in Twitter’s own search engine.  That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist (tweets are purged out of search over time unless you indicate the specific date range).  Still, if Microsoft is featuring “real-time” reviews for marketing efforts, the tweets better be fresh.  Jury is still out on whether or not this one is a little too stale:

Windows 7 tweet citation fail

Seriously though, what are people really saying about Windows 7?  Dare we believe the editors behind this revolving feed of rainbows, unicorns and 100% positive reviews? Here’s the latest from review’d:

Oct. 21-22, 2009

The numbers on the above graph are as follows: 226 tweets total (131 positive and 95 negative for a 58% positive hurrah on launch day so far). I’d say reviews are a little more skeptical than Microsoft would lead you to believe.  Still, people can be pretty harsh out there on the interwebs, shrouded in anonymity and separated by screens and input devices.  Here are some verbatims we collected from the two camps.

First on the positive side:

Positive tweets as tracked by review'd

Thanks to @mattymax, @Ducky11, and @troymccabe for the above tweets.

And on the other side of the fence:

Negative tweets as tracked by review'd

Credit to @tweeetosaurus, @djDeficit, and @jimtac for their words of wisdom.

Fact of the matter is that an aggregate of these messages helps to create an aura about a product.  It’s intensified by the consumption quantity (followers receiving) and authority level of the originator – something that Microsoft has reduced down to “Twitter User” in its questionable citations.

In this little journey through Microsoft’s marketing today, we also found this fun little feed to help visitors understand “What people are saying about Windows 7.”  It pulls in reviews and discussions from all the fun sources such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and an RSS blog feed.  To join the conversation, you tag your message or content with #win7, #windows and the like.  So we sat and watched the stream for a good bit of time waiting for anything negative to come through…zilch.

Microsoft, if you want to play fair in social media, censoring (if that indeed is what you’re doing) is off-limits.  For the rest of us, the best piece of advice today might be to just take a peek at the same hash tags within Twitter’s search or set up a column in TweetDeck to get the unfiltered truth.

Daily review'd score

So what’s this review’d score?  It’s one of the most important metrics that review’d makes available.  It’s consistent system-wide (in terms of how it’s calculated) and represents a sense of how opinions are faring for the entity you’re tracking.  It’s based on a 0-100 scale (0 = people are completely upset to 100 = ecstatically overjoyed).

We typically present it as two numbers on an org’s profile page.  One is your daily score, so that’s the relationship between positive and negative tweets tracked today.  The other is a reputation score, which fluctuates less and is based off of the previous seven days worth of data.  The tide can turn swiftly in Twitterverse and so we’ve chosen this period based on our experience of witnessing events unfold for orgs such as Whole Foods or people like Kanye West.

What’s interesting about the above comparison (showing just the daily score over time) is that Red Sox support actually rose as they lost.  Angels, on the other hand, declined by about 10 points.  You’ll also note that the Sox score dropped to 0 at one point.  This is because there were no positive tweets tracked that day – the day the Sox first faced-off against the Angels and lost.

You’ll be hearing us mention the review’d score often moving forward, but let us know if you have any questions.

Thanks to all of you who signed up for the Feedburner feed of this blog.  We appreciate it.  Also, welcome to all the new @reviewd followers on Twitter!

There’s no question that one of the most contested rivalries in sports worldwide is between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. So as we head in to the 2009 Major League Baseball postseason, we thought it’d be a good idea to let you preview a bit of the benefits review’d brings to the table through a real world example.

Now as you’ve probably read on the site, review’d is a Twitter sentiment analytics service. All that fancy speak basically means that we’re able to filter for and quantify when people express an opinion about something in 140 characters or less. To do so, we’ve developed a proprietary algorithm that scours Twitter and reports these data back to you in near real-time. Since we’re not “live” yet per se, I’ll give you a sense of some of the data we’ve been able to track on these two teams over the past couple of weeks.

Recognizing that the Sox and Yankees aren’t yet playing each other, it’s possible that’ll be a case soon. So why not keep an eye on how people feel about the teams over time? Chances are there are going to be plenty of die-hards..on both ends of the spectrum.

We started tracking these teams on Sept. 21, just before the season started winding down and we’ve been able to track more than 2,000 tweets that carry an opinion with them (and a keyword associated with the team). But taking a look closer is when it starts to get interesting.

For the Yankees during the period we tracked 1,086 positive tweets versus 196 negative. For the Sox, it was 710 positive versus 155 negative.

Here are a few examples of the tweets we tracked (on each side of the fence – no bias from us *wink* *cough* *#redsoxftw* *ahem*):

Red Sox (positive)

Red Sox (negative)

Yankees (positive)

Yankees (negative)

Just from that little bit a data you’re able to tell a lot already: how the teams are doing versus each other on a quantity (chattiness) and relative opinion basis. Yankees went about 85% positive and Red Sox at 82%. A tight race (no surprise given how close the games typically end). I think we have a new rivalry on our hands!

Imagine if you could analyze this after wins versus losses. Think about the value in following all the people who praise your team. What if you could trend these data over time and compare against Twitter campaign efforts? We could compare the four pairings of teams in the playoffs and see how they do as the series builds. There could be a growth (or shrinkage) of support as things progress – how so, and by whom? All of that – and more – will be possible with review’d!

Make sure you’ve signed-up for the Feedburner and are following @reviewd on Twitter to keep in touch with review’d. There’s plenty more to come…

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Image credit: team logos MLB, individual tweets copyright creators (linked to in image).