Brandwatch

Next week is Social Media Week . That’s well known. What’s less well known is that this is Social Data Week , and this facet of social underpins a lot of the stuff on next week’s agenda. Nevertheless, many people with social in their job description, from public relations to marketing to ‘digital’, are not yet fluent in the data foundations. One aspect of social data that particularly excites me is the Semantic Web, often referred to as Web 3.0. According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Web 3.0 describes the web as a universal medium for the exchange of data, information and knowledge. It’s an awesome vision that’s playing out right now. ...

I’ve just stumbled upon this service, Magpie Brandwatch . As an engineer by training, nothing quite appeals to me more than a good looking chart, but I’d like to ask a question of anyone who knows more about these things than me… How do they disambiguate brand names? In other words, when looking for commentary about Apple, how do they differentiate between Apple and the type you eat? What if you were trying to track where people are talking about Creative. Great brandname; very very difficult to disambiguate. Virgin? Next? Palm? Shell? Gap? ...