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.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, business analytics, Education, entrepreneur, IBM, IBM Research, Jeopardy, nfl, picture stories, predictive analytics, retail, smarter commerce, Smarter Planet, social business, storytelling, twitter, Watson

Editor’s note: Startup entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and business leaders will gather in San Francisco for the IBM SmartCamp competition world finals next week (Jan. 31, Feb. 1 and 2.) To follow the event virtually, return to A Smarter Planet for liveblogging, view livestreaming video and follow the Twitter hashtags #IBM SmartCamp and #startups.

How do you create something from nothing? It seems like magic to take an idea and turn it into a growing enterprise.  Yet this is what entrepreneurs do every day.   And that’s also what we did when we created IBM SmartCamp.

Our journey started almost 3 years ago.  I was traveling to conferences and events around Europe. As I met entrepreneurs, it became clear that very few had heard about what we think is the biggest technology opportunity over the next decade: making the planet smarter by putting intelligence into things no one would recognize as computers, including cars, appliances, roadways, power grids, buildings, farms, waterways and clothing.

It became clear: We needed to do something to get the startup community focused on making a smarter planet- and help the ones who do so become successful.

Click here to view the embedded video.

IBM doesn’t invest directly in startups, but we’re heavily involved in the startup community. We acquire 15-20 companies a year.  We are investors in the funds of many of the leading VC firms. We believed we could help passionate entrepreneurs succeed by connecting them with individuals who had built or invested in great companies.

SmartCamp started life as an internal startup. It was a night and weekend activity for a small group of us. We had no resources and no budget. However it’s amazing how many people wanted to help these early stage companies grow.

We piloted the program in Dublin in Oct 2009.  We sought out like minded individuals and organisations who were excited by the idea of working with startups.  We hoped we’d find the funds and resources to make our vision a reality.  ’This is too important to let lack of funds stop you – this is a great idea you’ll find a way to fund it’ was how one of the exec team put it. Immediately we discovered how infectious the passion of entrepreneurs is–how exciting it is to be surrounded by individuals who believe they can change the world. We were amazed at how some of the best and most experienced investors and mentors were willing to give up their time to be part of this for nothing material in return.

After a lot of work and a great event, we figured that this could be exported to other cities and regions. We sought out the best partners and mentors we could find and ended up being overwhelmed by support in Austin, Boston, Barcelona, Bangalore, Istanbul, London, New York, Rio, Silicon Valley, Stockholm, Shanghai and Tel Aviv.   The program scaled much quicker than we thought thanks to our amazing mentor network and the hard work of lots of local team who took on this additional responsibility because they too were infected by the entrepreneurs passion.

Now we are approaching our 2nd world finals.   The teams from last year have done very well.  A number of them raised significant investment rounds including Carecloud ($20.1m), Panoramic Power ($4.5m), Sproxil ($1.8m) and Streetline ($15m).  We also signed a global partnership with Streetline, a company that provides sensor-based street parking systems, to roll out a Smarter Parking Starter Kit.

From parking in the US to validating medicines in Africa these companies show it is possible to bring combine sensors, interconnectivity and analytics to bear on complex problems.   The SmartCamp mentors have proven how they can help accelerate these teams by sharing their wealth of experience and contacts.

Sometime I have to pinch myself to believe it is real. I recall listening to Jim Breyer from Accel (Forbes Midas List #1 tech investor)  at SmartCamp Rio talk with these early stage entrepreneurs about the amazing opportunities open to them. And I remember being pleasantly surprised when I turned on a television in a hotel room there and saw a BBC World Service feature on Sproxil’s progress in Africa. These confirm for me how well the SmartCamp program can support early stage entrepreneurs.

Overall, the past couple of years have taught me you can’t predict the future.  At our global finals event last year, we never imagined that our keynote speaker (then-Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen) would be busy negotiating a financial bailout package with IMF.  He delivered a great presentation at our event that in the face of an international crisis.

My takeaway message from all of this is that many things are out of your control. This is especially true for start-ups—with their very limited resources. However, the best entrepreneurs have belief and passion. It helps them to have investors and mentors lending a hand. But what matters most is their ability to respond to the daily cycle of opportunity and crisis.

Technorati Tags: ibm smartcamp

Click on the image for a larger view:

Click on the image below for the full series:

The IBM Curiosity Shop on Flickr
The IBM Curiosity Shop on YouTube

Technorati Tags: animations, connect, lotus, picture stories, smarter collaboration, social business

The Galley has been gathering applications from software hackers, artists, community activists, engineers and urban planners who want to participate by producing installations, performances, workshops, apps, etc.  The call for proposals closes January 20, but Dillon says it’s not too late to get started on a proposal and urges people with innovative ideas to bring them forward. Find out more here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The plan is to use the entire city of Dublin as a living laboratory for events and experiments. But the scope of the thinking is global. The exhibit will tie in with the Dublin City of Science conference which will bring hundreds of scientists from around the world next July to showcase the latest advances in science, encourage cross-discipline and cross-border collaboration and promote the role of science in society. The HACK THE CITY organizers also hope to take elements of the exhibition on the road in the future to cities around the world, including San Jose, California.

IBM is one of the sponsors of HACK THE CITY and will take the lead in one of the projects–an effort to use technology to develop practical solutions to urban problems. “The idea is to come up with solutions that we can then publish out to the world,” says Martin Kelly, a partner in IBM’s Venture Capital Group.

Science Gallery is an enlightened organization. It’s about promoting science, but it does that by mixing science, technology and art. Approaches like this help create well-rounded individuals and transcendent societies.

Technorati Tags: IBM, Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin

One of the pioneers in the field, BodyMedia Inc. in Pittsburgh, has just introduced an update of its BodyMedia FIT system that not only tracks physical activity but also provides personalized feedback. The system includes software from IBM that is most often used by businesses–but in this case helps individuals improve their well being. “This is a big step for us,” says Ivo Stivoric, the chief technology officer at BodyMedia and one of its founders. “This helps consumers connect the dots. They don’t just see the data. They get recommendations on what they can do to get back on track.”

The system demonstrates the potential for a combination of sensor technology, analytics software and easy-to-use interfaces to unlock the mysteries of the human body and produce insights that people can immediately put to use to make themselves healthier and happier.

BodyMedia got its back in the late 1990s, after Stivoric and Astro Teller met on the soccer fields at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Teller was working on a PhD in artificial intelligence and Stivoric, an industrial designer, was running the university’s wearable computing lab. Their initial idea, which they conceived along with co-founders Chris Pacione and Chris Kasabach, was to create sensor-packed garments for use in healthcare monitoring. While that’s still one of the company’s markets, the main focus is now on consumers.

The company is one of the leaders in the market for fitness monitors, both with its own brands and with devices and software that it provides to other companies, including 24 Hour Fitness, Jenny Craig and Jillian Michaels. One of its devices was featured on The Biggest Loser TV show. BodyMedia FIT consists of an armband monitor, online activity manager, wristband display and downloadable applications for mobile devices.  The system tracks key metrics that affect a person’s health, including the number of steps taken, the intensity of physical activity, calorie burn, sleep duration and sleep quality. Rather than just using a pedometer, which measures activity on a single axis, the system uses a 3-axis accelerometer, which tracks motion in any direction. The device contains three other sensors, as well: a temperature sensor, a galvanic skin response sensor and a heat flux sensor.

The feedback function is an important advance because it turns data gathered by the sensors into useful insights and advice. The feature was developed by Summa, a technology services company in Pittsburgh, using IBM Decision Management software. The software sizes up a person’s data,  determines whether they’re meeting their goals and suggests things they can do to meet them before the end of the day. The system can be customized to reflect the fitness philosophy of  BodyMedia partners. Over time, BodyMedia expects the system to become more and more personalized.

For Stivoric, this is just the beginning. BodyMedia is working on new designs that will turn the wearable devices into fashion statements. “We want it to be so cool that you’ll wear it as a badge of honor. You’ll want to show people that you’re taking care of yourself,” he says. Stivoric also sees a great potential for using the data BodyMedia collects to classify people according to their “lifestyle signatures” and make wellness and disease prevention recommendations based on the health outcomes for people who are like them. “We’re helping to kick off a revolution,” he says. “We’re revolutionizing healthcare by giving people the tools they need to take care of themselves.”

This is a payoff from all those years of tinkering by the pioneers of wearable computers.

Technorati Tags: BodyMedia, IBM

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s not too late to weigh in with your opinion, however. Watch the videos and “Like” away!

People power will come to life 
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below the video.

You will never need a password again
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below the video.

Mind reading is no longer science fiction
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below the video.

The digital divide will cease to exist
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button  below the video.

Junk mail will become priority mail
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below the video.

Technorati Tags: IBM 5 in 5

You will never need a password again
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below the video.

Mind reading is no longer science fiction
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below the video.

The digital divide will cease to exist
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button  below the video.

Junk mail will become priority mail
Click here to view the video and vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below the video.

Technorati Tags: IBM, The Next 5 in 5

Vote for this as the coolest IBM 5 in 5 prediction by clicking the “Like” button below.

Read an in-depth blog post from IBM Research about the technology underlying the prediction.

Join the Twitter conversation at #IBM5in5

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

Guest post by Jonathan Taplin, Professor at the University of Southern California and the Director of the school’s Annenberg Innov

What a thriller! After 11 innings last night, the St. Louis Cardinals forced a winner-takes-all Game 7 with tonight sure to be a great finale to close out this October classic.

The historic Game 6 also forced the Twitterverse to crown two new tweet and sentiment leaders in IBM and USC Annenberg’s latest analysis from the USC Social Sentiment Index. Due to their late inning heroics, the Texas Rangers’ Josh Hamilton netted the highest volume of tweets and an 88% positive sentiment while the biggest hero of the night, St. Louis Cardinals’ David Freese led his team in tweets and an 86% positive sentiment. Extra innings afforded diehard fans the opportunity to share their sentiment and push these two players over the top.

So what does Game 6’s analysis tell us? Social media fans are highly vocal, generating the largest volume of tweets during the final moments of the game. These real-time fan insights could have tremendous impact on how and when marketers engage these fans.

Get ready for an awesome Game 7 and a final World Series analysis where we’ll not only crown the Social Media MVP of the series but take a closer look all the cool trends we found with fans’ sentiment toward both teams’ managers, highest spike in a player’s tweets and much more. Stay tuned!

• Learn about how IBM and USC AIL are conducting the social media analysis project.
• Read more about “Behind the Diamond: Understanding MLB Fan Sentiment.”
• Read more about social media analysis from Games 3 & 4.
• Read about social media analysis from Games 1 and 2.

• Check out images from the World Series Social Sentiment Index

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, business analytics, IBM, predictive analytics, Smarter Planet, social business