survey

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--It looks like sentiment analysis is becoming an interesting business for start-ups. After talking with Jared Goralnick from AwayFind, at the 500 Startups event, I ran into Guy Hirsch, of Saygent, who's also launching a company to help businesses mine sentiments of their customers or potential customers.

The product will be a partly automated voice survey tool. Clients will create survey questions and come up with a list of desired respondents, and then a machine will poll these people (via phone, unfortunately) and collect their voice responses. It will take the answers it gets and farm them out, via Mechanical Turk, to a panel of humans who will determine the sentiment of the respondents, as well as other factors that can't easily be determined by transcripts of responses.

Why not just do surveys the old-fashioned way, and ask people what they think? Hirsch says that getting an excitement (or anger, or frustration, etc) level on responses is both more valuable in marketing surveys and less expensive. All the human listeners have to do for Saygent is determine tone, not spend time transcribing.

Saygent correlates sentiments with the demographics it has from its clients' target lists, to determine, for example, if women or men are more interested in particular products or ideas.

Hirsch says his tool will also be usable for recruiting, especially for hiring phone workers. For example, if you want to hire people with friendly voices, or accents that resonate with particular customer demographics, this tool can help you find them.

I can't see Saygent replacing traditional phone surveys, but it does sound like a good way to get additional data points from a survey process.

Other sentiment-based services: • E-mail anger meter gets sensitivity training • When Exaudios is in use, it pays to get angry… Read more

In a country whose iconic vehicles include the Shelby Cobra and the Hummer, one might assume that electric-vehicle adoption in the U.S. would be hindered by a cultural proclivity for owning very fast or powerful cars.

Well, it turns out that drivers are not as horsepower-obsessed as one might assume, but actually quite practical when it comes to assessing their vehicle needs.

However, electric vehicles still fall short in consumers' minds when measured by those practical standards of cost and usability, according to a study conducted in the first quarter by Gartner Research.

The study, released yesterday, found that … Read more

People will significantly conserve electricity during peak demand if given price incentives and tools to modify usage, according to a new study.

Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OG&E), a utility company and a subsidiary of OGE Energy, announced this week the interim results of a study that was required as part of a $130 million grant from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. The utility used the grant to create a smart grid with 42,000 smart meters.

The study, conducted in conjunction with the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, consists of 3,000 OG&E consumers in Norman, … Read more

A survey of online mothers found that more small children can play a computer game than ride a bike. The Digital Diaries study from Internet security firm AVG said that 58 percent of children aged two to five know how to play a "basic computer game" compared with 52 percent who know how to ride a bike. Sixty-three percent can turn a computer on and off, and 69 percent can use a mouse. By contrast, only 20 percent can "swim unaided," 11 percent can tie their shoelaces without help, and 20 percent know how to make … Read more

The connected car is the next big thing in technology on the road. The latest survey of CNET users makes that clear: when asked which car tech features interest them most when buying a new car, 71 percent chose iPod connectivity, followed closely by in-car Wi-Fi (67 percent) and trailed substantially by satellite radio (49 percent). And there was little difference of opinion between rear-seat video entertainment (33 percent) and AM radio (28 percent).

Fifty-eight percent said having an in-car Wi-Fi hot spot would influence their decision on which car to buy. Users mentioned BMW (14 percent), Mercedes (11 percent), … Read more

Following its modest growth last quarter, the PC market saw its strongest quarter of the year, while managing to miss the expectations of research firms IDC and Gartner.

According to the Quarterly PC Tracker Survey released today by IDC, overall worldwide PC shipments grew 2.7 percent year-on-year during the fourth quarter, with Gartner reporting a slightly larger 3.1 percent as part of its quarterly report. Both numbers missed the firms' expectations, which IDC had predicted at 5.5 percent and Gartner at 4.8 percent.

IDC said that one of the big reasons for the "modest" … Read more

Facebook is the world's top social network, and now it's the best place to work, a study from career community site Glassdoor.com has found.

According to the site, Facebook earned a company rating of 4.6, besting last year's top employer, Southwest Airlines, which earned a 4.4 rating this year. Those businesses were followed by, in order, Bain & Co., General Mills, and Edelman. Facebook wasn't even on the list last year.

When it comes to the technology industry, it seems Web sites make employees happier than their offline counterparts. Overstock took the ninth … Read more

Twitter is now being used by 8 percent of online adults in the United States, according to a report out today from Pew Internet.

Based on survey results, the study found that among the Twitter users interviewed, 24 percent check their tweets several times a day, while 12 percent check in once a day.

Breaking down the demographics, adults ages 18-29 are much more likely to use Twitter than are older adults, minority users (African-Americans and Latinos) are twice as likely to use the service as are white users, and city dwellers are twice as likely to hop onto Twitter … Read more

So far this year, online holiday shopping is up. And market research firm ComScore believes that trend will continue.

According to ComScore, consumers spent $9.01 billion during the first three weeks of November, representing a 13 percent gain over the $7.95 billion spent during the same period last year.

For the months of November and December combined, ComScore is forecasting $32.4 billion in online spending. Last year, consumers spent $29.1 billion during that two-month holiday shopping period. ComScore also said that from January through October, online consumers spent $109.9 billion, representing a 9 percent gain … Read more