Big Data Tool Analyzes Intentions: Cool Or Creepy?

Details

Category: Blog

Created on Wednesday, 31 December 2014 08:11

Lexalytics intention analysis tool determines what you're going to do before you do it, the company says. This goes beyond sentiment analysis.

Many organizations mine Twitter and other social media streams to gauge the online masses' impressions of their products or services. But although this sentiment analysis is an effective way to mine for opinions, it's less useful at determining people's future actions.

Lexalytics, an Amherst, Mass., provider of text and sentiment analysis software, will soon release a new feature called intention analysis, which the company claims can predict a person's objectives based on his or her online activities.

"If you can take a content stream -- customer feedback data, for example, or chat logs from a website -- you can mine that [data] for intention, not just sentiment," said Lexalytics founder and CEO Jeff Catlin in a phone interview with InformationWeek.

Lexalytics' claim to fame is sentiment analysis, which the company has been doing for a decade. An impressive roster of tech players license the company's technology, including Oracle and Microsoft, the latter of which uses Lexalytics' software to monitor social media feeds.

Read the full article by Jeff Bertolucci on the Information Week