Tag Archives: Social

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Apple iPhone remains in 4th place behind Android smartphones according to latest social media monitoring report from DigitalMR

London (PRWEB UK) 24 April 2012

Social media research specialist The DigitalMR releases latest findings on what customers are saying about smartphones on the internet.

DigitalMR analyzed more than 300,000 comments from customers on smartphones December 2011 through January 2012 Nearly two-thirds (65%) of these customer views are positive, compared to 35% negative.


Android models are the most talked about brands of smartphones. Samsung attracts the most mentions with a market share of 34% of all positive comments and a 37% share of, negative comments small group. Next placed is HTC with 22% positive mentions and 18% negative, followed by Motorola with 11% positive and 13% negative.

Together, the three Android brands account for two thirds (67%) of all online customer feedback measured on smartphones.


The results are based on comments posted by consumers on the major smartphone brands: Apple, Motorola, Samsung, RIM (Blackberry), HTC, LG, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Kyocera and HP on September-October 2011

smartphone models established Apple and RIM (Blackberry) only account for 11% and 8% of the total comments were published respectively. Weak coherent parts Blackberry chat coincided with bad trade Q4 results, prompting her recent announcement “nofollow” to place more focus on the enterprise market.


DigitalMR analysis (supplied by SocialNuggets ) is based on comments posted by a range of relevant websites and open access platforms of social media. It measures not only the number of comments posted by consumers on the Internet, but also their sentiment -. If the messages are positive or negative in nature

Managing Director of DigitalMR, Michalis Michael commented: “Our social media monitoring over the last 6 months has consistently shown Android models like the most talked about brands. While Apple can at least rely on its strong presence in the tablet market, it seems RIM will return to its basic objective of corporate customers ”

All brands measured, achieve a positive net sentiment score (NSS) for December-Jan. NSS provides an overall percentage of net positive posts. The average NSS necessary for all brands measured is 30%. This shows customers are generally positive in their comments online.


Of the three major brands Android, HTC had a NSS of 39%, followed by a nominal rating of slightly below 27% for Samsung and Motorola for only 20% which was the lowest total of the NHS. Apple has reached the second highest at 24%. The NSS is more directed by Nokia (47%).


More data and analysis

Features

DigitalMR measured thousands of customer posts on the services and functions assigned to smartphones.The issues “operating system” and features “Service” generate the most comprehensive reviews – both positive and negative.

“Battery” but attracted only 11% positive reviews, but 16% negative, while on the positive side for designers “Body” attracted a 17% share of positive feedback, but only 11% negative .


Customer Reviews and more information

About DigitalMR

DigitalMR understands what people think and feel when they share views online. He is a specialist agency which provides a holistic approach to market research based on the Web. He specializes in the use of social media research, especially active web-listening, and online communities to enhance its business consulting approach. The agency has developed new methods in online focus groups as well as tools such as video diaries, bulletin boards and online ethnography. DigitalMR is headed by founder and MD, Michalis Michael and has offices in London UK, Nicosia Cyprus, and Columbus Ohio, in the United States.


About SocialNuggets

clear = “all”

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MediaMax Online Launches Social Buzz Media Monitoring

Burbank, Calif. (PRWEB) December 03, 2013

MediaMax Online, a leading provider of electronic press kits and media monitoring services, today announced the launch of their new product, Social Buzz Social Media Monitoring.

Social Buzz Social Media Monitoring provides clients a simple, effective way to listen to what customers, critics, supporters and competitors are saying about their brands, and the insight necessary to respond to that behavior. Social Buzz monitors data from over 200 million blogs, six million forums and message boards, Twitter, Facebook, consumer review/shopping sites (e.g. Amazon, Best Buy), News sites, YouTube and Wikis. Clients will be able to view all the information in intelligently designed reports filtered to their specifications.

Among its many features, Social Buzz enables users to:

Monitor posts for any campaign across various media segments and identify top trends and perceptions.
Create custom dashboards and reporting without the need to self-administer technical software interfaces
Compare the sentiment for any campaign to competitors’ campaigns over a specified timeframe.
Gain actionable insight into the positive, negative, mixed, or neutral tones of authors’ posts concerning a campaign.

Unlike other social media monitoring services, Social Buzz offers clients a dedicated account manager to assist clients with administration and competitive analysis at no additional charge.

“Social Buzz is a unique complement to our traditional monitoring service, Daily Buzz. Like Daily Buzz, Social Buzz Media Monitoring includes dedicated account management to deliver results with the best accuracy and data integrity on the market. Our customers will have the ability to tap into a significant amount of social intelligence, and use that information to drive meaningful, more focused media campaigns. We’re excited to offer Social Buzz to our clients and hope it will prove a key part of their day-to-day processes,” says John Libby, President of MediaMax Online.

About MediaMax Online

MediaMax Online provides technology-driven distribution and analysis solutions for the marketing and publicity of primarily entertainment industry properties, such as theatrical film releases, television, cable, home entertainment, music labels, talent and industry executives. MediaMax Online provides unique distribution services for electronic press kits, promos, toolkits, spots, public service announcements and television shows. The company’s publicity monitoring service, Daily Buzz service is unmatched in quality and performance. MediaMax Online is a DVS InteleStream company, a leading provider of media content supply chain services. For more information on DVS InteleStream, please visit http://www.dvs.tv.







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Live Social Data Visualization Sculpture the H

Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) June 12, 2012

The HÜB@Northside, a state of the art inflatable social space with the ability to display a variety of, real-time social connections and data visualizations inspiring you to “Look Up” will be located inside The Entrepreneurship Conference Headquarters, 149 Kent Avenue at North 5th in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The HÜB@Northside is the social town square and meeting place that connects innovators by enabling them to use social media to connect in a live environment, with others with similar interests. Contained inside the HÜB will be special events, a pitch space, and unique content not available at other festival venues such as one on one interviews, autograph sessions and contests. Inspired by the need to make meaningful connections at live events.

The HÜB has partnered with award-winning social discovery app Sonar to power a real-life, real-time social network among conference attendees. Sonar is the best way to connect and share with people nearby, and they share the HÜB’s vision for inspiring people to “Look Up” from mobile devices and connect face-to-face. 

You can download Sonar before you arrive at Northside, to know more about and connect with the other people around–people you’re already friends with and people who share your interests and connections.

“We wanted to curate a better way of connecting with others in the context of a live conferences. We asked ourselves, how can we help participants find their next co-founder, funder, or client and make sure they shake hands and not just tweet about it? How many times have we all stared at our mobile devices, endlessly looking for that magic connection, almost like a modern version of the Magic 8-Ball? How can we make sure they leave a venue with a connection that is truly valuable to them? The HÜB is our answer.” – Peter E Raymond – CEO ÜBERANGST

The HÜB will be unveiled at the Northside Festival, NYC’s largest and most accessible discovery festival. Hundreds of bands, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, innovators, and over 80,000 fans converge on Brooklyn over eight days to witness the most incredible showcase of “what’s next” in music, film, entrepreneurship, and art.

The Northside Entrepreneurship Conference is focused on design, technology, and business innovation. It consists of a series of major keynotes as well as over 50 panel discussions, a trade show pavalion, and the Startup Campus at NYU-Poly. Hear stories from the CTO of Etsy, Bre Pettis of Makerbot, Brett Martin CEO of Sonar, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Charlie O’Donnel of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, and GZA founding member of Wu-Tang Clan. Meet network, interact, and collaborate with the names and faces of design, innovation and tech in NYC.

Some of the unique content that the HÜB@Northside will curate are specific trending Twitter hashtags; living tag clouds, brilliant real time social data visualizations; curated festival film, music and art content; attendee submitted content “mashed up” live; networking & meet-ups, a live Pintrest bulletin board; and more.  The HÜB@Northside is accepting submissions through its website http://www.hubatnorthside.com to showcase the new innovators and unique startups of NYC.

As part of the special content being curated, the HÜB will accept speakers and content on-site during its “Feasibility Slam”: A hour long, heads up low-risk high-yield ideation event that enables participants to leverage their intellectual capital, while orchestrating and recontextualizing mission statements in a real time/live crowd sourced social network.  Project and implement thoughts on how to seamlessly fuse branded customer interactions with holistic content creators like yourself in the evolving cloud ecosystem. Learn how to fast track key enablers and analyze performance enhancing matrices. Understand how SEO keyword rich trend tracking can lead to ROI while on-boarding the pain points of your stakeholders . This out-of-the-box, non-proprietary, open sourced event with no brandcuffs, absolutely no brandcuffs that will produce concept deliverables via a mash-up, in a real time, live gameifed feasibility slam curated into a compressed format of 30-second intervals. Audience engagement will rearward additional time units. This streamlined format allows for tip of the iceberg thinking, with user-centric cross functionality, agnostic of A-B testing paradigms. This event is sure to be a win-win, best-of-breed, world-class event that is the tipping point among outliers that increases your bandwith and will drive the bottom line.

Really? No, but If you can’t stand the jargon above come and talk about it, you have 30 sec to pitch or bitch, gain more time if the crowd likes you and become the next trendsetter.

After Northside the HÜB@ will continue to curate connections at other conferences and special events such as SxSW, AllThingsD, Comic-Con, CES, international auto shows, consumer and industry event and other unique venues around the globe.

THE HÜB@NORTHSIDE is Made in NYC and is a project of Brooklyn-based ÜBERANGST and Human Condition, in collaboration with Brooklyn-based Northside Media Group during The Entrepreneur Conference of the Northside Festival from June 14-15. HÜB partners include, Sonar, East River Ferry & Clear Wireless.

Learn more: http://www.hubatnorthside.com

About ÜBERANGST:

ÜBERANGST is a high-end design, production and App agency. We push the envelope,  and need to be challenged. We have digitally brought the Mojave to Brooklyn and raced cars through Times Square. We design the future of consumer interaction. We are reinventing vehicle navigation. We are designing augmented reality glasses to change the way we view the world. We develop innovative brand and product interactions for Fortune 500 clients, sometimes even simulators.  We design custom apps for our clients and games for ourselves.

http://www.uberangst.com / @uberhub_hub / @uberangst

About Human Condition:

We are an innovation, R&D, think and do tank.

We steer the strategy of innovation through communication, R&D, and technology. We work with the socially conscious enterprise large and small, universities, governments, and nonprofits to solve their pressing challenges.

Human Condition is certified as a emerging biotechlology company by the City of New York.

http://www.hcxdesign.com / @hcxdesigntweets

About Northside Media Group:

Brooklyn has become an international adjective meaning “What’s next.” The Northside Media Group’s mission is to define and showcase that adjective through media, digital and large-scale events.

http://www.northsidemediagroup.com / @northsidefest

For media inquiries please contact:

Jesse Wachtel

Executive Producer – ÜBERANGST

jesse (at) uberangst (dot) com

347-465-7857

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First ever annual US Banking Social Media Report from DigitalMR to reveal that American Express is the most talked about US bank on the internet

London (PRWEB UK) 7 August 2012

DigitalMR analysed over two million online customer comments regarding the main US banks from April 2011 to March 2012. DigitalMR’s social media report (powered by SocialNuggets) analyses customer comments posted via a range of relevant finance related websites and open access social media platforms. It measures not only the number of comments posted by consumers on the internet, but also sentiment – whether these posts are positive or negative The full report will cover:


    Customer insights that can help banks shape their marketing and PR strategies
    Share of voice for top 20 banks
    Net Sentiment Score (NSS) for top 20 banks
    Top 10 Topics by number of mentions
    Individual focus on each of the top 20 banks
    NSS by Topic
    Top social media sources by number of mentions
    Breakdown of customer sentiment on Twitter
    Recommendations on strategy for the use of Social Media Research.

DigitalMR Commercial Director, Tom Hogg, commented: “This report will provide a comprehensive set of consumer driven benchmarks, so for the first time, US banks will be able to gauge customer perceptions of their performance against their competitors”.

Report Highlight – Top 5 most talked about US banks on the Internet

American Express 22.3%

Bank of America 20.5%

Citibank NA 18.3%

Wells Fargo 13.2%

HSBC 4.2%

Based on share of 2,145,835 comments

However, as the final report will show, there is a large difference between the positive and negative mentions that these banks generate.

Results are based on comments posted by consumers on the major US banks including: CitiBank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, American Express, HSBC, Capital One, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase Manhattan, Morgan Stanley, TD Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, Discover Bank, Suntrust Bank, Bank One, Orchard Bank, Countrywide Bank, Key Bank USA and Sovereign Bank.

Contact

Tom Hogg

thogg(at)digital-mr(dot)com,

tel: +44 (0) 7580 581 109

http://www.digital-mr.com

About DigitalMR

DigitalMR understands what people think and feel when they share views online. It is a specialist agency which provides a holistic approach to web based market research. It specialises in utilising social media research, especially active web-listening, and online communities to enhance its business consulting approach.

The agency has pioneered new methods in online focus groups alongside tools such as video diaries, bulletin boards and online ethnography. DigitalMR is headed by founder and MD, Michalis Michael and has offices in London UK, Nicosia Cyprus, Warsaw Poland and Columbus Ohio, in the US.

About SocialNuggets

SocialNuggets technology delivers real-time market intelligence for fast moving industries by analyzing data from various social media sources with a mission to liberate social media data and sentiment analysis for use in real-time research of brands, products and features. SocialNuggets delivers ready to use market intelligence for various industry verticals including consumer electronics and banking. SocialNuggets data is delivered in bite size, ready-to-consume, infographics and is also available in the form of a full access to our data warehouse for analysis and integration with customers’ data. SocialNuggets, a Serendio company, was founded in 2011 with headquarters in Santa Clara, CA. For more information, please visit http://www.SocialNuggets.net







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First ever annual US Banking Social Media Report from DigitalMR and Cicero to reveal that American Express is the most popular bank according to customer comments on the internet

(PRWEB UK) 14 August 2012

DigitalMR and Cicero analysed over two million online customer comments regarding the main US banks and associated financial services companies from April 2011 to March 2012. The social media report (powered by SocialNuggets) analyses customer comments posted via a range of relevant finance related websites and open access social media platforms. It measures not only the number of comments posted by consumers on the internet, but also sentiment – whether these posts are positive or negative. The full report will cover:

    Customer insights that can help banks shape their marketing and PR strategies
    Share of voice for top 20 banks
    Net Sentiment Score (NSS) for top 20 banks
    Top 10 Topics by number of mentions
    Individual focus on each of the top 20 banks
    NSS by Topic
    Top social media sources by number of mentions
    Breakdown of customer sentiment on Twitter
    Recommendations on strategy for the use of Social Media Research.

DigitalMR Commercial Director, Tom Hogg, commented: “A Net Sentiment Score provides an overall benchmark that indicates how well banks are perceived by their customers. In particular, banks recording negative scores need to focus on the areas where they can achieve the biggest gains – areas that are highlighted by the feature level NSS methodology”.

Report Highlights

Top 3 Highest and Lowest Net Sentiment Score

DigitalMR’s report will measure, not only the number of comments posted by consumers on the internet, but also sentiment – whether these posts are positive or negative. The difference in the number of positive to negative posts that each bank attracts, provides it with a Net Sentiment Score (NSS). NSS is an overall percentage score of net positive posts. Among the Top 20 banks the top three best performers in terms of achieving the highest NSS were:

1)    American Express 63%

2)    Orchard Bank 59%

3)    Suntrust Bank 49%

The bottom three performers among the Top 20 banks were:

18) Bank of America (-9%)

19) Sovereign Bank (-10%)

20) Countrywide Bank (-17%)

Results are based on comments posted by consumers on the major US banks and financial services providers including: CitiBank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, American Express, HSBC, Capital One, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase Manhattan, Morgan Stanley, TD Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, Discover Bank, Suntrust Bank, Bank One, Orchard Bank, Countrywide Bank, Key Bank USA and Sovereign Bank.

About DigitalMR

DigitalMR understands what people think and feel when they share views online. It is a specialist agency which provides a holistic approach to web based market research. It specialises in utilising social media research, especially active web-listening, and online communities to enhance its business consulting approach.

The agency has pioneered new methods in online focus groups alongside tools such as video diaries, bulletin boards and online ethnography. DigitalMR is headed by founder and MD, Michalis Michael and has offices in London UK, Nicosia Cyprus, Warsaw Poland and Columbus Ohio, in the US.

About Cicero

Cicero is an international consultancy specialising in corporate communications, digital strategy, government affairs and research services for policy, business and consumer audiences. Our sector focus on financial and professional services provides clients with detailed insights into the issues which shape their marketplace with award-winning outputs aimed at a wide-range of targets including the media, public policymakers and regulators.

About SocialNuggets

SocialNuggets technology delivers real-time market intelligence for fast moving industries by analyzing data from various social media sources with a mission to liberate social media data and sentiment analysis for use in real-time research of brands, products and features. SocialNuggets delivers ready to use market intelligence for various industry verticals including consumer electronics and banking. SocialNuggets data is delivered in bite size, ready-to-consume, infographics and is also available in the form of a full access to our data warehouse for analysis and integration with customers’ data. SocialNuggets, a Serendio company, was founded in 2011 with headquarters in Santa Clara, CA.







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The first annual US Banking Social Media Report from DigitalMR and Cicero to show that American Express has the biggest Twitter presence

(PRWEB UK) 21 August 2012

DigitalMR and Cicero analysed over two million online customer comments regarding the main US banks and associated financial services companies from April 2011 to March 2012. The new report (powered by SocialNuggets) analyses customer comments posted via a range of relevant finance related websites and open access social media platforms, including Twitter. It measures not only the number of comments posted by consumers on the internet, but also sentiment – whether these posts are positive or negative The full report will cover:

    Customer insights that can help banks shape their marketing and PR strategies
    Share of voice for top 20 banks
    Net Sentiment Score (NSS) for top 20 banks
    Top 10 Topics by number of mentions
    Individual focus on each of the top 20 banks
    NSS by Topic
    Top social media sources by number of mentions
    Breakdown of customer sentiment on Twitter
    Recommendations on strategy for the use of Social Media Research.
Please register here to receive advance free data from the forthcoming report.

DigitalMR Commercial Director, Tom Hogg, commented: “With Twitter becoming such a major communications channel for customers, banks really need to monitor and respond to what is being said about them, to drive the Twitter agenda for their brand”.

Report Highlights

The Top 3 most Tweeted Banks

1)    American Express 23.3%

2)    Bank of America 19.5%

3)    Citibank 18.5%

The report will measure, not only the number of Tweets posted by consumers, but also sentiment. Of the total Tweets analysed, a quarter were positive, 16.5% negative, 4.3% mixed, while over half (54.4%) were neutral in tone.

Results are based on comments posted by consumers on the major US banks and financial services providers including: CitiBank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, American Express, HSBC, Capital One, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase Manhattan, Morgan Stanley, TD Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank, Discover Bank, Suntrust Bank, Bank One, Orchard Bank, Countrywide Bank, Key Bank USA and Sovereign Bank.

Contact

Tom Hogg

thogg(at)digital-mr(dot)com,

tel: +44 (0) 7580 581 109

http://www.digital-mr.com

About DigitalMR

DigitalMR understands what people think and feel when they share views online. It is a specialist agency which provides a holistic approach to web based market research. It specialises in utilising social media research, especially active web-listening, and online communities to enhance its business consulting approach.

The agency has pioneered new methods in online focus groups alongside tools such as video diaries, bulletin boards and online ethnography. DigitalMR is headed by founder and MD, Michalis Michael and has offices in London UK, Nicosia Cyprus, Warsaw Poland and Columbus Ohio, in the US.

About Cicero

Cicero is an international consultancy specialising in corporate communications, digital strategy, government affairs and research services for policy, business and consumer audiences. Our sector focus on financial and professional services provides clients with detailed insights into the issues which shape their marketplace with award-winning outputs aimed at a wide-range of targets including the media, public policymakers and regulators.

About SocialNuggets

SocialNuggets technology delivers real-time market intelligence for fast moving industries by analyzing data from various social media sources with a mission to liberate social media data and sentiment analysis for use in real-time research of brands, products and features. SocialNuggets delivers ready to use market intelligence for various industry verticals including consumer electronics and banking. SocialNuggets data is delivered in bite size, ready-to-consume, infographics and is also available in the form of a full access to our data warehouse for analysis and integration with customers’ data. SocialNuggets, a Serendio company, was founded in 2011 with headquarters in Santa Clara, CA. For more information, please visit http://www.SocialNuggets.net







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Social media can provide banks opportunity to shine

London (PRWEB UK) 25 October 2012

Social media can provide banks opportunity to shine

THE US banking sector has been slow to make use of social media and is only now playing catch-up with other industries, according to a new report released today.

The ‘US Banking Sector Social Media Report’, co-authored by Cicero Group and DigitalMR provides new analysis into what the sector is currently doing and how it should address its social media strategy.

The research found that despite many banks now operating on platforms including Twitter and Facebook, many are still failing to provide basic engagement with customers and understand what people are saying about them.

With over 93 per cent of comments being made on Twitter, the report suggests banks should be willing to use social media as a tool for providing stronger customer service and addressing potential issues directly over these channels. The report found that it may not only resolve issues quicker, but also allow the banks an opportunity to improve the level of positive relationships with current and potential customers. Ultimately, social media represents a key medium for banks to develop closer relationships with their customers in order to encourage them to recommend and advocate their products online.

Some banks are ahead of others, but the majority are still failing to grapple with the basics. One recommendation in the report is that banks can use digital media to illustrate their corporate social responsibility initiatives, making business plans more digestible and a tool for recruitment.

Commenting on the research, Cicero’s Head of Digital Chris Jackson said, “With over half the US population now on some form of social media platform, US banks would be missing a trick by not having a coordinated social media strategy.

“It not only allows banks to improve their reputation, but allows them to interact with customers and resolve any issues there and then. The key message from the report is this: it is possible to have millions and fans and followers, but without a strategy to use and engage this audience, then the use of social media is limited”.

This report is an entry into the world of social media for the uninitiated, but at the same time it can be a benchmark for the banks that already track their online reputation using social media monitoring tools. It is advisable to use multiple sources in order to validate the sentiment reported for banks in other sources.

For further information on the report and its contents please click here:

http://info.digital-mr.com/US-Banking-Social-Media-Usage-and-Reputation-Insights

Notes to Editors:

Results are based on 2 million comments posted by consumers between April 2011 and March 2012 on the major US banks including: CitiBank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bank, American Express, HSBC, Capital One, Barclays, JP Morgan Chase Manhattan, Morgan Stanley, TD Bank, PNC Bank, Regions Bank,

Discover Bank, Suntrust Bank, Bank One, Orchard Bank, Countrywide Bank, Key Bank USA and Sovereign Bank.

About Cicero Group:

Cicero is an international consultancy specialising in corporate communications, digital strategy, government affairs and thought leadership generation for policy, business and consumer audiences.

http://www.cicero-group.com

About DigitalMR:

DigitalMR understands what people think and feel when they share views online. It is a specialist agency which provides a holistic approach to web based market research. It specialises in utilising social media research, especially active web-listening, and online communities to enhance its business consulting approach.

The agency has pioneered new methods in online focus groups alongside tools such as video diaries, bulletin boards and online ethnography. DigitalMR is headed by founder and MD, Michalis Michael and has offices in London UK, Nicosia Cyprus, Warsaw Poland and Columbus Ohio, in the US.

For further information:

Chris Jackson

Head of Digital

Tom Hogg

Commercial Director







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Start-up Explodes, Finds Audience through Social Media

Costa Mesa, CA (PRWEB) May 14, 2013

The fashion start-up Wizards of the West, a new company from Costa Mesa, in California (USA), is launching their new e-commerce store. They are a successful example of how a business born through social media can grow up and become a part of their clients’ daily life, by reaching out to customers where they are most comfortable: the social networks.

Jason West, Wizards of the West co-owner, can explain this success: “unlike our competitors, who had to integrate an existing business into social media, we were born from it. Essentially building a new business from within the platform and not supporting it externally. We have a completely different perspective on how to approach and enable social media”.

“Even in our short lifetime we have seen an enormous amount of brands trying to capitalize sales directly through social media. This is not a good approach. The worst mistakes we have seen happened when organizations used social media as a bulletin board. It’s an incredibly rich platform that’s so effective at rewarding your customers”, adds the Wizards of the West co-owner.

This innovative e-commerce store works according to the ideals of social rewarding and gamification, a new concept even for the savviest online retailers. Always choosing to be different, Wizards of the West took the concept and applied it to their technology infrastructure, “rewarding customers for loyalty before they even become customers”, says Jason West.

The term gamification is used to describe the techniques that increase people’s natural desires for competition, achievement, status or self-expression. One of its core strategies is to reward the “players” with points or other kind of compensation, such as digital currency, when they complete the desired tasks. Providing a reward encourages more and more people to compete and this is an approach that has been revealing to be successful in the e-commerce world.

Currently, one of gamification’s major applications is in the marketing field. Actually, over 70% of Forbes Global 2000 companies are using or intend to use gamification for marketing and customer retention purposes. This is why gamification is one of the paths followed by Wizards of the West. Until now, tenacity and proprietary technology have enabled the start-up to stay ahead of the curve.

“Our ecommerce platform is well integrated with social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We do a lot of R&D on social migration, getting to know how people react to likes, tweets and pins. Gamification is relatively a new buzzword around social media, but “we are already experimenting with it”, states Anil Gupta – Director of Technology.

Taking into account that e-commerce sales continue to grow worldwide in 2013, with sales projected for over $ 333 billion and an aggressive 13% growth rate, as stated by official data (emarketer.com), this bet doesn’t seem so strange or risky.

For now, the methodology is working, as the fashion start-up has been seeing its sales skyrocket month over month. Why? Because Wizards of the West uses proprietary technology to track, analyse and encourage social interactions among their clients and potential customers. Fashion is fickle, but not as fickle as social media. As brands spend millions trying to map out what makes a brand socially acceptable to their followers and fans on social media, this start-up has known that since the beginning.

To discover more about this project, you can visit wizardsofthewest.com or contact the company directly (info (at) wizardsofthewest (dot) com).







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Social Media Outperforms Wall Street at Predicting Earnings Surprises?

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) April 01, 2014

Researchers from three prestigious schools – Georgia Institute of Technology, Purdue University, and City University of Hong Kong – have released what they believe is the first study proving the ability of social media to predict future stock returns and earnings surprises. Forthcoming in the April 2014 issue of The Review of Financial Studies, the study, “Wisdom of Crowds: The Value of Stock Opinions Transmitted through Social Media,” examines data from 2005-2012 available on social investing site Seeking Alpha and compares it to market data for that period.

Citing the study’s conclusion that peer opinions published online reliably predict positive or negative stock returns anywhere from one month to three years in advance, Associate Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, Yu Jeffrey Hu, states, “Traditionally the domain of professional forecasters, financial analysis is increasingly being performed and broadcast by investors themselves.”

The study’s researchers performed textual analysis of more than seven years’ worth of material posted to the web site Seeking Alpha. Seeking Alpha is a crowd-sourced investing site that allows contributors to publish research and ideas, which the community of users then peer-reviews.

The data included more than 97,000 articles and 459,679 comments. Articles were written by 6,500 authors and covered over 7,000 stocks. When compared to market data and articles from Dow Jones, analysis showed:

●    Articles on stock investing and community comments on the Seeking Alpha site predict stock returns over every time-frame examined: three months, six months, one year and three years.

●    This was not true of previous studies of the predictive value of short chatter messages posted on Internet message boards, which demonstrated no predictive value.

●    Unlike previous sell-side research showing that financial analyst opinions are quickly incorporated into the market price, this study finds that the value relevant information on Seeking Alpha site affects the market price at a slower pace.

●    The Seeking Alpha user community successfully identified the predictive value of authors in real time.

     ●     When the community disagreed with authors, their opinions had predictive value

     ●     Authors who were historically accurate met with less or no community disagreement.

●    Community sentiment – either positive or negative – was more accurate in predicting future stock prices and earnings surprises than Seeking Alpha articles alone, sell-side analysis, or similar content from Dow Jones.

●    Previewing the results, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Seeking Alpha predicted stock returns and earnings surprises above and beyond Wall Street analyst reports and financial news articles.”

Hu and his fellow researchers concluded, “The predictability holds even after controlling for the effect of traditional advice sources, such as financial analysts and newspaper articles. Together, our findings point to the usefulness of peer-based advice in financial markets.”

“Social media outlets are unique in the sense that they enable direct and immediate interactions among users. These interactions, combined with the seeming intelligence of the ‘crowd,’ may be one of the primary reasons social media platforms are able to produce value-relevant content that is incremental to that revealed through traditional news channels,” said Hu.

Professor Hu worked on this independent study with Hailiang Chen of City University of Hong Kong, Prabuddha De and Byoung-Hyoun Hwang of Purdue University. The study was conducted independently from Seeking Alpha.

About Yu Jeffrey Hu

Yu Jeffrey Hu is an Associate Professor at the Scheller College of Business at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is an expert on big data, business analytics, electronic commerce, Internet retailing, social media, consumer behavior, and online advertising.

He has also written papers on pricing models in online advertising and mechanisms to protect online consumers’ privacy. His research has been discussed and cited by media outlets such as New York Times, TIME Magazine, Wired Magazine, National Public Radio, InformationWeek, INC. Magazine, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Atlanta Channel 2 (WSBTV). His papers have been adopted for classroom use by many top universities around the world.

Dr. Hu received his Ph.D. in Management Science and Information Technology from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Prior to joining Georgia Institute of Technology, he worked for Purdue University as a tenured associate professor. He also worked for MIT’s Center for Digital Business as a research associate. He received a B.S. degree in Finance with the honor of Outstanding Graduating Student from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and received a M.S. degree in Economics with honor from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisdom of Crowds: The Value of Stock Opinions Transmitted through Social Media

The Review of Financial Studies

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