Blog > September 2010

Tech update:

This weekend’s product update is all about making Brandwatch faster:

• We are upgrading several of the servers powering Brandwatch, resulting in faster Recurring Phrases component
• We have also made several, smaller changes which should all contribute to making Brandwatch slightly faster and easier to use
• Finally, extra servers have been added to our Crawlers, to pick up more mentions more quickly.

Pope crowns Susan Boyle Queen

The news buzz this week has been all about the papal visit, overshadowed by the Vatican’s shame over paedophile priests and a general anger over the state funding of  Benedict XVI’s visit. With this in mind, analysing the data on his arrival becomes interesting. Taking a look at the recuring phrases there is a surprise star.

The most common ten phrases are not a huge surprise with Catholic and and Benedict obviously dominating but shining out of the word cloud is Susan Boyle who in her five minutes in front of the pope was recognised higher in social media terms than the Queen who spent the whole day on the visit. Despite an initial overexposure to Boyle, it seems the public still want her more than the royals.

Finally, an obvious, yet satisfying way to look at this data is the sentiment analysis. Below, we’ve we cut out the neutral sentiment (which has been mainly news reporting) and pitched the positive against the negative.

Maybe a PR lesson from Ms Boyle is in order as well as a song.

The Sauce