Tools for Text Analysis
Text analysis is a process in which semantic and other information can be collated so that it can be analyzed in a quantitative manner to arrive at some decisions. This is a process that has been used for years in traditional market research where open ended questions are collated, a code list is made and then the various response forms are coded before data entry can be done for analysis.

Depending on the depth to which you analyze text, the data can throw up some basic and some very insightful information that can be derived through patterns and trends. The techniques that are used in text analysis include linguistic, statistical and machine learning. It also involves retrieval of data from various sources on the Internet, lexical analysis, pattern recognition, annotations and other such data mining techniques, albeit in the language arena. There is also an element of text categorization, text clustering, concept extraction, and sentiment analysis and document summarization too.

There are various kinds of online, offline, free and paid text analysis tools that are fairly easy to use. These have been listed below.

Free Text Analysis Tools
Some free and open source text mining tools allow you to understand the kind of comments that are being made on your blog, microblog, social networking page or elsewhere on the Internet.
- GATE – This is an open source toolkit that delivers the results in a graphical environment
- INTEXT – A DOS version of TextQuest, this text mining tool has been in the public domain for more than 7 years now.
- Open Calais – Another open-source text analyzer that includes semantic functionality and can search and analyze text within a blog, content management system websites, applications or more.
- LingPipe – Part of the suite of Java libraries this tool is free and can be used for a variety of linguistic analysis.
- RapidMiner Text Mining – A great source that allows you to check out the comments on your networking page without having to view them manually.
- S-EM (Spy-EM) – A tool that helps in text classification and dividing them into positive, negative and neutral responses based on learning.
- The Semantic Indexing Project – An open source tool again that includes semantic analysis and search applications too.
- Text Analyzer – This online tool is extremely easy to use. All that you need to do is to enter the text that you want analyzed to give you a detailed analysis on the same web page in seconds. Data retrieval is not part of this text analysis tool, though.
- Tagul – Gorgeous tag clouds responsible for the above tag cloud of this post.

Commercial Text Analysis Tools
Some of the text analysis tools that you may want to consider if you are more serious about the depth of analysis that you perform on your site, social media pages and more have been detailed below.
- ActivePoint – A tool that offers natural language processing (NLP) and categories text based on contextual search.
- Alceste – An easy to use software that allows automatic analysis of all kinds of text.
- ClaraBridge – Text mining software for businesses.
- Crossminder – A good text analysis tool that used natural language processing and various other text analytics techniques.
- Eaagle text mining software – A tool that is used by many due to the speed with which it structures large volumes of data to give direction.
- ClearForest – This solution gives meaning to unstructured information by using data mining technologies.
- SPSS LexiQuest – The advanced text analysis tool from SPSS.
- Expert System – A tool that uses the proprietary COGITO platform and creates clusters of text that can be interpreted.
- Analyze Words – An intelligent software that can analyze the personality of a website, a brand or even a person based on the words that are used. It categorizes words and content into upbeat, worried, angry, depressed, arrogant, personable, sensory and more. Basically the three dimensions that are analyzed are emotional style, social style and thinking style.
- Lexalytics – Transforms unstructured text to structured information, almost magically.
- Lextek Profiling Engine – A tool that classifies, routes and filters electronic text based on user defined profile.
- Recommind MindServer – A tool that uses PLSA (Probablistic Latent Semantic Analysis) for accurate text retrieval and further classification.
- Attensity – A software that goes a step further and classifies text based on “who”, “what”, “where”, “when” and “why” facts.
- SAS Text Miner – An advanced and reliable tool that is used by many market researchers and web analyzers for text analysis.
- DiscoverText – A tool used by many market research and web analytic companies to create text analysis solutions.
- Xanalys Indexer, an information extraction and data mining library aimed at extracting entities, and particularly the relationships between them, from plain text.
- Wordstat – An easy and yet powerful tool that helps analysis textual information in responses, open-ended questions and interviews.
- OpinionEQ – A solution based on advanced semantic and linguistic research focusing on the problem of collecting, interpreting, and structuring both Web and real time communications.

The Negative Effects of Our Social Media Obsession

Almost everyone who you know is probably also on your social network! While you may be exhilarated about the manner in which you have been able to get back in touch with your friends from school and the way you feel connected with the family or among friends, there are various consequences of social networking that are being criticized these days.

The latest statistics from Nielsen state that the proportion of time spent on social sites is 22.7% of the total time spent on the Internet. This is even higher than the time spent on online games, which is a far second at 10.2%. The obsession that we seem to have with networking online has an impact on personal lives, health, academic and workplace performance and even grammar.

Social behavior – The extent to which social networks have invaded our lives is almost all pervasive. People do not think anything of pulling out their phones in the middle of a conversation to check if they have received a ‘so called’ important email or message. The fact is that there are so many of us doing it that it has almost become normal accepted behavior, while in fact it is obnoxious and gives out a signal that you are really not interested in what the person has to say. I do agree that sometimes the phone can augment the conversation and bring in facts in heated discussions as MG Siegler writes, but most of the time people are either not interacting with each other or one is ignoring the other.

Personal life – Social networking has invaded our homes too. When it is time to sit with the family, we tend to frequently check the comments that have been left on our status message. In all probability, we have started to find the video uploaded by a friend more interesting than the live performance that our kids would like to put up in front of us.

Quality of interactions – The manner in which we interact is also becoming more tuned to the manner in which we post tweets and Facebook status messages. Sentences are shorter and we do not think before we say something. While these networks are helping a large number of people getting in touch with each other, the nature of the relationship or interaction is shallow and transient.

Children – A study indicated that children who spend more time on the Internet find it tough to concentrate in the classroom. The study also explained how children do not get excited about study tours, face to face communication and offline events. They are more obsessed with communicating on social networks. Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield claims that social networking sites are leading to an inability to communicate face to face. She states that spending too much time on these sites is leading to significant changes in the brain, especially among young users. Teachers and those in the education industry are seeing a trend where children are unable to appreciate and understand another point of view too.

Corporate productivity – Some people also debate about the use of social networking sites in the office. A 2009 study showed that people spent an average of 40 minutes in office on social sites, something that cost companies about $2.25 billion in terms of productivity. On the other hand, there are some studies conducted by Australian researchers that state that the use of some social networking in office can increase productivity. It probably all depends if you are using social networking to collaborate on solving a business problem or if you are using it to send love messages to your girlfriend.

The aura of social media has pervaded our lives to such an extent that our lives revolve around the smart phone, the laptop and a few sites that we frequent regularly. It is affecting the way we think, the way we react, the things we do and the manner in which we do them. It is not too sure whether it is all for the better. Social networking has undoubtedly connected many people, saved lives, and increased communication channels across the world. But it is pertinent to ask about the influence that excessive use and obsession of social networking is having in our lives.

(Source: Photo-TwinCities.com)

One of the most common grouse of companies is the relative lack of data that is available for social media to assess the effectiveness of the dollar spent on the same. However, there are now various tools that exist that can help in collating data and then understanding the manner in which social media is being consumed.

For example, Social Mention is a monitoring tool that can be used to check out the mention of a phrase brand or product across various blogs, microblogs and sharing sites. While this is a product that cannot be deemed as extremely accurate, it does give a good idea of the kind of word of mouth, so to speak, that the brand has been able to generate.

Klout is a great tool that you can check out to understand the people who have maximum influence over the social web on specific topics. Backtweets is another easy to use tool where you enter a url and it allows you to see the number of tweets that have taken place related to the url.

Newer applications in the social media metrics space include our friends at Sprout Social. They have a very easy to use social CRM that allows you to measure and manage your social media presence easily. Another is Swix, a social media analytics application that can be used monitor all social media properties that a company has invested in. Hootsuite provides a social media dashboard. Like this there are many more, which ones are you using? Would you recommend them?

Businesses have been using online surveys for a while now to measure customer satisfaction and conduct market research. They know that success in business always involves listening to customers. But a few forward-thinking businesses have taken this listening process one step further. They are using online systems to solicit product ideas from both their customers and their staff.

A Different Kind of Questions
Most online surveys ask customers to evaluate a product or service. For example, a hotel might ask, “How would you rate our check-in process in terms of convenience?” A survey intended to solicit news ideas might ask a different kind of question, for example, “How can we improve our check-in process?”

Putting a Dollar Value on Ideas
A new idea many sound promising, but will it actually lead to increased profits? That is the calculation that business managers have to make. In the case of a new product, this calculation can be fairly straightforward. A manager has to estimate two things: what it will cost to implement the innovation and how much the innovation will yield in new sales. If the expected benefits outweigh the costs significantly, a manager will probably give the innovation a green light, then monitor costs and sales figures to see if things turn out as expected.