Social analytics system and method for analyzing conversations in social media

Abstract

Conversations in an online content universe are monitored. A social analysis module analyzes individual conversations between publishers in the online content universe. Publishers that influence a conversation are identified.

1 . A system for analyzing a social media, comprising: 
 a conversation monitoring module to monitor conversations in the social media, where an individual conversation is a networked discussion of postings published on the Internet for a particular topic;    a social analysis module to analyze the web content associated with a conversation and social relationships indicative of the evolution of the conversation.    
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the social analysis module includes an influence engine to identify influencers for a selected conversation, where the influencers are those postings that have a statistically greater influence on the course of the conversation compared with a median level of influence.  
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 2 , wherein the influence engine ranks influence of postings using at least one of page popularity, site popularity, relevance, recency, and link attributes.  
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 3 , wherein the link attributes include attributes of the page containing the inlink: relevance, recency, page popularity, and site attributes.  
     
     
         5 . The system of  claim 2 , wherein said conversation monitoring module automatically generates at run time a conversation index for social media of trusted publishers and the influence engine analyzes the conversation index.  
     
     
         6 . The system of  claim 5 , wherein the conversation monitoring module utilizes a crawler to collect web content to generate the conversation index.  
     
     
         7 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein a user-defined topic definition includes keywords and Boolean aerators.  
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 7 , wherein the user-defined topic definition includes at least one URL.  
     
     
         9 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the system generates a map for the conversation of the social relationships between postings.  
     
     
         10 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the social analysis module generates a tone factor indicative of how positive and negative words are used in a conversation.  
     
     
         11 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the social analysis module characterizes at least one attribute related to the propagation of a conversation from the group consisting of a velocity factor indicative of the rate at which new agents join a conversation, a susceptibility factor indicative of the likelihood that a publisher will join a conversation, and instances when a selected publisher joins a conversation.  
     
     
         12 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the system analyzes links between postings and determines social relationships based on degrees of separation between posting nodes, directionality of links between nodes, strength of relationships, and topic relevance.  
     
     
         13 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the system generates an output for an ad server to determine publication nodes and times to place ads related to a conversation.  
     
     
         14 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the system determines a point of engagement to influence a conversation.  
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the point of engagement includes at least one influential posting.  
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 15 , wherein the point of engagement includes a time based on at least one attribute related to the evolution of a conversation.  
     
     
         17 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the social media includes blogs.  
     
     
         18 . A system for analyzing a social media of postings published on the Internet, comprising: 
 a conversation monitoring module having an associated crawler and trust filter to generate a conversation index of social media around trusted relationships; and    a social analysis module including an influence engine to analyze the conversation index for social relationships indicative of the influence of individual publishers on a selected conversation, where a selected conversation is a networked discussion between social media publishers for a particular topic selected based on a user-defined topic definition.    
     
     
         19 . The system of  claim 18 , wherein the influence engine determines a list of influencers including those publishers that have a statistically greater influence on the course of the conversation compared with a median level of influence.  
     
     
         20 . The system of  claim 19 , wherein the influence engine ranks influence of publishers using at least one of page popularity, site popularity, relevance, recency, and link attributes.  
     
     
         21 . The system of  claim 20 , wherein the link attributes include inlink relevance, inlink recency, inlink page popularity, and inlink site attributes.  
     
     
         22 . The system of  claim 18 , wherein the user-defined topic definition includes at least one URL relevant to a User's query string.  
     
     
         23 . The system of  claim 18 , wherein the social analysis module generates a tone factor indicative of how positive and negative words are used in a conversation.  
     
     
         24 . The system of  claim 18 , wherein the social analysis module characterizes at least one attribute related to the propagation of a conversation from the group consisting of a velocity factor indicative of the rate at which new agents join a conversation, a susceptibility factor indicative of the likelihood that a publisher will join a conversation, and instances when a selected publisher joins a conversation.  
     
     
         25 . The system of  claim 18 , wherein the system analyzes links between posts and determines social relationships based on degrees of separation between nodes, directionality of links between post nodes, strength of relationships, and topic relevance.  
     
     
         26 . The system of  claim 18 , wherein the system generates an output for an ad server to determine publication nodes of influencers to place ads related to a conversation.  
     
     
         27 . The system of  claim 18 , wherein the system determines a point of engagement to engage an influencer to influence a conversation.  
     
     
         28 . The system of  claim 27 , wherein the point of engagement includes a time based on at least one attribute related to the evolution of a conversation.  
     
     
         29 . A system for analyzing a social media of postings published on the Internet, comprising, comprising: 
 a conversation monitoring module having an associated crawler and trust filter to generate a conversation index of social media around trusted relationships;    a social analysis module including an influence engine to analyze the conversation index for social relationships indicative of the influence of individual publishers on a selected conversation, where a selected conversation is a networked discussion between social media publishers for a particular topic selected based on a user-defined topic definition; and    an application module coupled to the social analysis module, the application module utilizing influence data generated by the influence engine to make decisions related to the selected conversation.    
     
     
         30 . The system of  claim 29 , wherein the application module is a brand monitoring module to generate an alert about influencers in a conversation associated with the reputation of a branded entity or brand.  
     
     
         31 . The system of  claim 29 , wherein the application module is an online advertising targeting and delivery module to determine publishers and times to serve ads.  
     
     
         32 . The system of  claim 29 , wherein the application module is a publisher content network.  
     
     
         33 . The system of  claim 29 , wherein the application module is a search engine optimization control.  
     
     
         34 . The system of  claim 29 , wherein the application module is an influencer relationship management panel to display relationships between influencers.  
     
     
         35 . The system of  claim 29 , wherein the social media include blogs, wikis, online communities and other platforms enabling social media.  
     
     
         36 . The system of  claim 20 , wherein attributes of inlinks include the location of the inlink on the page wherein it was published.  
     
     
         37 . The system of  claim 36 , wherein if the inlink is found in a comment, whether the comment is attributable to another publisher in the conversation or is anonymous, and whether the comment has a date.  
     
     
         38 . A method comprising: 
 generating a conversation index of posts published in an online social media around trusted relationships;    analyzing the conversation index based on a user-defined topic definition of a selected conversation, where the selected conversation is a networked discussion between social media publishers about a particular topic based on the user-defined topic definition; and determining the influence of posts in the selected conversation.