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John Squire is IBM’s director of Digital Marketing and Analytics.
Updated Post
AN UPSET IN THE MAKING
3 February 2012, 11:30 AM Eastern
Just like on the field, Eli Manning is riding a late surge to overtake Tom Brady in the IBM and USC analysis of Super Bowl XLVI social media sentiment. Overnight results of Super Bowl Twitter buzz drove Giants quarterback Eli Manning’s ‘T score’ for positive sentiment ahead of Tom Brady. Manning now leads with 66% vs. Brady’s 61%, which represents an 8-point shift compared to the previous day. In another interesting development positive sentiment for Giants head coach jumped dramatically with his score rating increasing to 76% positive. That places Coach Coughlin above all of the players and coaches on both teams.
This day-to-day shift in Super Bowl fan sentiment illustrates the speed at which consumer sentiments can shift online — a factor that businesses are watching closely due to the potential impact on their brand equity and sales.
By applying analytics in social media settings we can identify nuances – positive, negative, irony, snarky vs. sincerity, in real-time. That’s enough time to help an organization, or in this case professional athletes, adjust their comments and actions to dramatically (and positively) impact their brands.
Original Post
SUPER BOWL ANALYSIS TAKES US BEYOND THE TWEETS
2 February 2012
One of the most dramatic NFL games ever played was Super Bowl XLII pitting the undefeated (18–0) New England Patriots led by record-setting quarterback Tom Brady against the surprising NY Giants with young, unproven Eli Manning at the helm. A thrilling, some say shocking victory for the Giants ended the Patriots bid to be the only 19–0 undefeated champion in league history. And now Super Bowl XLVI – The Rematch — anticipated to be the most watched American television show in history, promises to take social media to a whole new level.
As my colleague, and former NFL player Kevin Nosbusch posted on Wednesday, IBM and the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab are conducting the first sentiment analysis of the two Super Bowl quarterbacks to illustrate how new analytics technologies make it possible to quickly assess the positive, negative and neutral sentiments shared by fans.
Why is this sentiment analysis important to IBM? In addition to being a longtime partner of the NFL, IBM recognizes that its clients, just like football players, are closely connected to their brand presence.
Using advances in analytics companies, academics, journalists can gain new insights into consumer perceptions via social media on endless topics from football and baseball to movies and retailing. Technologies can even distinguish irony and figure out which tweets are just background noise and those that are truly important.
Branding Upset on the Digital Playing Field
The Super Bowl analysis shows us that today the two quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Eli Manning are in statistical dead heat: Brady earning 65% positive sentiment and Eli Manning earning 62% positive sentiment. That actually represents a big branding upset on the digital playing field. Most sports and marketing followers would assume that Brady should be far ahead given his lofty status as an elite QB for many years and three championship rings.
Other noteworthy findings show that wide receivers have upstaged the quarterbacks, who are being positioned in the news media as the chief protagonists — Wes Welker is #1 in positive sentiment and Victor Cruz is a close 2nd. Interestingly Brady leads by 3% points, exactly the point spread Las Vegas oddsmakers have favored the Patriots.
So while it looks like Tom Brady is going into the game as the Social MVP, now is not the time to get cocky. Eli Manning is holding his own against the more experienced Brady in terms of positive sentiment.
The IBM USC analysis illustrates the potential insight and benefits that social media analytics can deliver to a brand — whether you’re an professional football player or a global enterprise. Businesses that ignore the impact of social media will be stuck on the sidelines.
Learn more about IBM and USC AIL social media analysis projects.
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Lia P Davis in
Kevin Nosbusch is an IBM senior technology consultant based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1973 he played for the Fighting Irish during Notre Dame’s National Championship season, and went on to play for the San Diego Chargers.
When I played football at the University of Notre Dame and for the San Diego Chargers, broadcast television and radio were the primary ways fans enjoyed the game. There was no ESPN, no sports talk radio, the Internet was only known by DARPA scientists and social media didn’t exist.
Gosh, I sound pretty old. But in just 30 years the media and sports industries have been completely transformed by technology. Today, fans are not only Tweeting about their favorite players and teams, but just last week at the Pro Bowl athletes were participating in the virtual conversation on the field at Twitter stations.
This week, IBM and the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab (AIL) are conducting an analysis of social media trends related to Super Bowl Quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning. By analyzing hundreds of thousands of public tweets they’ll determine the fans’ sentimental favorite – the people’s champion if you will.
Vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below.
Read and in-depth blog post from IBM Research about the technology underlying the prediction.
Join in the Twitter conversation at #IBM5in5
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Steve Hamm in
IBM, MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvard Business School today are sponsoring a symposium at the the two universities. The morning topic: How advances in information technology can help improve productivity, and improve incomes and create jobs for the 99%. It’s being followed this afternoon by a mock Jeopardy! match between Watson, IBM’s very smart computer, and teams from MIT and HBS.
Update:
Teams of three students from MIT/Sloan and HBS take on IBM’s Watson. (This is only the second contest matching Watson against collegians. In the previous contest, Watson beat teams from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Pitt came in second, much to the chagrin of rival CMU!)
Harvard wins the first question, with “What is Belize?” Answering: countries in central America, ending with “e”
But then Watson takes over, running the category.
The machine picks “Who’s Your Daddy Company?” as the next category, eliciting a huge hook of laughter from the audience.
They finished the Jeopardy! round, with Watson, $8600; Harvard, $5200 ; and MIT, $-200 .
(I got disconnected from HBS’s Wi-Fi at a crucial moment, destroying the coverage of the second round. Grrrrr)
Final Jeopardy!
Clue: Finding the spot for this memorial caused its creator to say “Americans will march across that skyline.”
The question: Mt. Rushmore.
Harvard and Watson answer correctly. MIT does not.
Final score: Watson, $53,601; Harvard, $42,399; MIT, $100.
!!!!! Continue Reading »
No computing paradigm lasts forever, so new approaches must be found to support the next phase of computing: learning systems. IBM Research’s colloquium, Frontiers of IT, being held today at the Watson Lab in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., explores disruptive innovations that could utterly transform the industry over the next two decades.
To Tweet or follow the commentary on Twitter, use #ITfrontiers.
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Update
4:15 pm – 5:15 pm Panel: The Next Grand Challenges in Computing
What is it? How should it be design and conducted?
Jim Schatz, Johns Hopkins
Applied Information Sciences
Former director, R&D, National Security Agency
My challenge for IBM Reserach is to put together a complete and formal proof for Fermat’s Last Theorem, one of the major theories of mathematics.
(Fermat’s Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two.)
We need computers to generate and prove new theories. “Where we’re going is the fully automated mathematician.”
“It’s the next generation of mathematics, and the implications for humanity will be profound.”
He’s asked: The implications for business and society?
“Can’t say. But every bit of mathematics that has been invented has been applied. The mathematics that comes out of this will get past the limitations we see in computing. You’ll have to trust me on this one: If we build it, they will come.”
David Aronoff
Flybridge Venture Capital
IBM is the eco-friendly company, applying IT to smarter cities and a smarter world. The challenge is for IBM to build a high-performance, data-class server that operates in a carbon neutral footprint. Also, make the process for building it eco-safe and carbon neutral, and the parts should be recyclable. And it should be built in the United States.
Erik Kruse
Marketing strategy, future consumer demands
Ericsson
We’re on the brink of a new society. We need to rethink things. Thanks to computing and mobile technology we have empowered people. We have digital natives who are coming out into the adult world. They have different expectations and mindset. They expected to be connected. That will act as a change catalyst and set new rules, and help define our next grand challenge.
“The grand challenge is we can use the smarter and network society not to play chess or jeopardy, but address climate change, aging population, scarce resources, and poverty. These are the global challenges.”
“We have to do it on a global scale and we have to have system were we include everyone.”
Ashifi Gogo
CEO, Sproxil
His startup provides information for tracking the pharmaceutical industry supply chain.
He suggests that IBM develop a system for feeding back consumer input to the producers of products and services. It’s “reverse logistics.
You could empower people to use their cell phones to send feedback. Leverage crowdsourcing. You add an electronic record to cash-based transactions.
Moderator: Irving Wladawsky-Berger
Chairman Emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology
We are living in an increasingly connected, complex and unpredictable world. If you need to find out what’s going on and made decisions, how do you do it in this kind of world? You can take a more statistical approach.
The grand challenge is: is there something IBM can do to formalize the transition from the traditional management world to one where people use these sophisticated new tools to improve the way they make decisions.
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By Dario Gil
Program Director
IBM Research
When IBM’s Watson defeated two past champions on TV’s Jeopardy! game show last February, it awoke many people to the awesome power of computing. Watson demonstrates that computers are at last becoming learning systems–capable of consuming vast amounts of information about the world, learning from it and drawing conclusions that can help humans make better decisions.
At IBM Research, we believe that learning systems will shape the future of information science and the IT industry, and that Watson represents a very significant step on that journey.
But every innovator needs a target to aim for, so, after the Jeopardy! challenge, we’re searching for the next “grand challenge” to will drive the next advances in Information Technology. To help shape our thinking, we’re engaging in a conversation about the future of computing with scientists and business leaders at an IBM Research Colloquium on Friday at the lab in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. The questions we’re asking are straightforward: What should the next grand challenge be? How should we design it? How should we pursue it?
We want to throw a wider net, as well. The Jeopardy! contest inspired a team of IBM and university researchers to create a system that could beat the best Jeopardy! champions. What “grand challenge” would you choose? Hopefully, the colloquium and follow-up conversations will help us set an audacious goal.
( To follow live blogging from the colloquium from 10 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. on Friday, bookmark here and come back when the event is live.)
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Kevin Winterfield in
Entrepreneur, comedian and actress Felicia Day will be the special guest emcee at this year’s Innovate2011 conference, June 5 – 9. We caught up with her recently to ask about why she agreed to be the host (a conference first for her), as well as get her views on where technology is heading, and the impact innovations such as Watson have on her industry.
What made you decide to host Innovate2011?
Felicia: My brother worked for IBM and had been to Innovate many times. He said it was a really fun time. So, I have that connection to IBM. And I feel the tech world is something I’m very comfortable in. I enjoy working with tech companies because I’m always looking to do something no one has done before, and that kind of thinking is embraced by tech companies. IBM seemed like a really good fit for me to make my first foray into being a host.
Oh, and I’m excited to meet Watson.
Speaking of Watson, from your perspective, where else could Watson’s natural language processing be used?
Felicia: I derive great enjoyment by sharing things [through social media] that people don’t know about, but they would enjoy – especially in the area of entertainment, gaming, social media.
We’re in a world with so much inundation of information and we are able to customize our living experiences to really identify what we love in the world … but I think there’s a particular need for curation and customization with all the technology we have in order to find the information that you’re looking for.
So, having the technology that we can say “Hey, find a really good cupcake within two miles of me.” Or, “What time was my dentist appointment?” to … being able to interact with all the technologies around us in a way that is more human … that would be particularly helpful for people in this social media world, where we’re always connected, but maybe not connected to the right things.
Why should your fans, fans of The Guild, be interested in IBM?
Felicia: I learned, in my years when I was starting The Guild from the ground up, to appreciate how valuable all the back-end technology components were to us getting going quickly – things we took for granted.
So, to me, all my experiences have given me a great appreciation for the people who are experts in the field who work on the platforms and technology behind the scenes, and who without them nothing would exist.
And having my brother be at IBM for so long and knowing that his work with data systems made things run properly and help us advance as a society made me really interested in supporting that, and proud to be giving more of a face to it.
How’s The Guild going and are you working on any new projects you can tell us about?
I have a new project that should come out this summer. It’s based on the world of DragonAge, which is a video game franchise I love. They gave me an opportunity to create a narrative web series that fits in their universe. I created an elf character who is an assassin, and we follow her on her quest. It’s even more “meta” than The Guild, which is a show about people playing a game. This is a show about me playing a character who could fit in the world of a game. I’m progressively digging myself deeper and deeper into the world of video games which is not a bad thing because I love them.
Thank you Felicia for chatting with us today. Any final thoughts?
Felicia: You’re welcome. And thank you, too. I’m really looking forward to Innovate. To me, I’ve always been connected to tech, so the people I admire most are the people who innovate in the tech area.
Remember to register today for Innovate2011, the premier event for software and systems innovation. You can follow Felicia on twitter at @feliciaday.
IBM's Watson computing system
When we think of the systems that make up a smarter planet, what typically comes to mind are industries like manufacturing, transportation, energy, or banking. But there is another ‘industry’ that needs to become smarter. We might call it the humanitarian industry. That is, the system that creates a safety net to support society and is made up of philanthropies, social services, education organizations, NGOs and government agencies.
In many ways, this is the most human of all systems. So it is ironic to consider how Watson, a computing system, could help us solve civic, social and cultural challenges and make smarter humanitarian decisions. But Watson’s deep QA technology presents new possibilities to do just that. Through private sector collaboration with nonprofits, Watson can become the next innovation to be used as a force for societal good.
8:40
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Steve Hamm in
The excitement about IBM’s computer, Watson, and its appearance on the Jeopardy! game show rose to a feverish pitch as the man versus machine drama played out on television earlier this week. The machine won–by no means a foregone conclusion. The episode proved that a small team of highly-motivated geniuses backed by an ambitious, deep-pocketed corporation can create a machine capable of beating the most expert of humans at a sophisticated mental game. It is truly a remarkable moment in the history of computer science and innovation.
Yet in Stephen Baker’s book about the contest, Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, the most interesting questions are not about machines but about humans. This is intentional. On page 18, Baker writes that, whether the computer won or lost, it is his hope that it “might lead millions of spectators to reflect on the nature, and probe the potential, of their own humanity.”
TV’s Dr. Gregory House may be brilliant, but, frankly, he could use some help from IBM’s Watson–which is looking for a new challenge now that it has beaten the top human champions at Jeopardy! “House eventually gets to the right diagnosis, but he typically saves the patient only at the last minute,” says Dr. Eliot Siegel, a radiologist and director of the Maryland Imaging Research Technologies Lab at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “Watson would give House a much higher level of expertise. He’d lose some viewers, but he’d practice better medicine.”
All kidding aside, Siegel believes that a version of Watson designed for the healthcare industry “could revolutionize the way we practice medicine.”
And Siegel has the opportunity to help make that happen. IBM and Nuance Communications today announced a joint effort aimed combining Watson’s advanced analytics with Nuance’s speech recognition to create services for the healthcare industry. They’ll be assisted by physicians and researchers at Maryland and Columbia University Medical Center. The two companies hope to bring a solution to market in the next 18 to 24 months.
