In The News

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Make Sense of Internet Chatter About Brands

June 23, 2009

If you're in business today, it's important to tap into the chatter on the Internet to gain better insight into the needs and interests of your customer. But cutting through the clutter can be daunting, especially for small businesses with limited resources.

Focus: Roadmap to Relevant Social Media Conversations

June 17, 2009

A lot of B2B companies have a tough time rationalizing their involvement with social media. It's an expense and a distraction, and the value of broadcasting to the universe is dubious when you only need to reach a few hundred key decision makers. Listening for that small set of voices amid the massive conversation of the social media universe is extremely difficult. But few companies can succeed if they quit when things become difficult, so the question becomes this: how do you discover what discussions are important to you, where your customers, supporters and detractors converge, and how you can quickly engage in those conversations?

Bloomberg: Facebook Users Staying In Friday Night to Grab Names

June 11, 2009

CEO Dan Neely weighs in on the land grab for Facebook user names: "You remember the days of folks buying random domains because they thought they were going to be able to sell them for massive amounts of money?"

Macali Communications: Expressions vs. Impressions

May 26, 2009

The idea of measuring value on the web by measuring impressions is outdated and the accuracy of that measure is questionable. It's based on the Nielsen paradigm where they think a small sample of set top boxes is representative of a much larger population.

JimKukral.com: Listening Is The Key To Social Media ROI

May 20, 2009

Listening... It's the first step really. Even if you're only dipping your pinky toe into the social media waters, at the very least, you need to listen first. If you don't listen... how do you know what people are saying about you? You can't. And guess what? They are talking about you... Listen to the conversation with Dan Neely.

PitchEngine: Jacob Apelbaum Joins Networked Insights

May 19, 2009

Jacob Apelbaum has joined Networked Insights as VP of Technology. Apelbaum was most recently VP of Engineering at ITInnovision. He will be responsible for managing all areas of technology development for the SocialSense listening platform. Industy notice: MrWeb, Social Media Analysis, and WisBusiness.com.

Scobleizer TV: Robert Scoble Interviews Dan Neely about The Word of Net

April 20, 2009

A two-part interview on Scobleizer TV: Part 1 and Part 2.

1TimStreet: What Do You Know About Your Brand?

April 9, 2009

A video interview at SxSW with CEO Dan Neely.

TechShowWIRE: Jive Software Partners With Networked Insights

March 13, 2009

Powered by Networked Insights' SocialSense technology, Jive Insight will enable Jive clients to get a real-time view into the companies, products, and topics that their community is engaged in. Also reporting the announcement: Intranet Journal, Ajax World, Northwest Innovation, IT Web, and AdOps.

ClickZ: Super Bowl Buzz Measures Vary Along With Value to Advertisers

February 6, 2009

The goal of many Super Bowl advertisers in recent years has been not only to make a splash during TV ad time, but to generate online discussions. But determining the ad winners and losers from an online buzz perspective isn't always as clear cut as adding up field goals and touchdowns.

SocialMediaBiz: Measuring the Social Super Bowl

February 5, 2009

The Super Bowl has come and gone, but the online interactions around the brands that paid up to $3 million for each :30 ad spot is still going strong... well, for some brands.

BusinessWeek: Teleflora Super Bowl Ad Got Best Online Buzz for the Buck

February 4, 2009

That's according to a quick study by social media tracker Networked Insights, which looked at the online searches and discussions about each Super Bowl advertiser in the few days before and then after the game.

BusinessWeek: The New Focus Group: The Collective

January 7, 2009

There are many ways to listen to what's being said about your company, product, brand, service and most importantly, related universe. Networked Insights is listed as a vendor that uncovers and analyzes what people are saying both inside communities and on the open Web.

The Capital Times: Business Beat: More bad news than good in 2008

December 31, 2008

A handful of smaller IT companies also made a splash in 2008. Broadcast Interactive Media, which designs Web sites for TV stations in the nation's largest markets, and Networked Insights, which mines social networking interactions for marketing information, continued to grow.

Ars Technica: Online buzz key to creating long-term game revenue

December 19, 2008

According to a new report from Wisconsin-based new media company Networked Insights, topping the NPD charts may not be the only barometer for success in the game industry.

GamesIndustry.biz: Fable II tops social interaction chart

December 18, 2008

Fable II was the most socially interactive title in the US in October, new data from Networked Insights has revealed. According to the company the game generated over 8 million interactions across various social media and social interaction sites, making it the most talked about game in that month.

Kotaku: Top-Sellers? Bah, Let's Look At The 10 Most "Engaging" Games

December 17, 2008

It's easy to track the biggest-selling games. You can track them with sales numbers. But how do you track the most-engaging games? That's harder. But Networked Insights reckon they've got the answer.

Forbes: The Most Talked About Games

December 17, 2008

Networked Insights' findings, if applied correctly by publishers and advertisers, may prove that there is value in marketing to social- networking platforms like Facebook as marketers can have direct conversations with consumers.

Gamasutra: LittleBigPlanet and Guitar Hero: World Tour Top Online Engagement Chart

December 17, 2008

In a new report tracking popular video games among online audiences, research firm Networked Insights ranked Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet and Activision's Guitar Hero: World Tour among its ten highest ranked titles according to online engagement. Game and Player also notes that Networked Insights list is not the same as NPD's top-ranked video games.

BusinessWeek: Beyond game sales: Measuring interaction

December 16, 2008

Which is the most popular video game, the one that sells the most units, or the one that sparks the most buzz? The same question echos through much of social media—and the answer depends in great part on whether the business model is based on sales, advertising or marketing.

TV Week: Most Watched vs. Most Discussed: Measuring Engagement

December 9, 2008

Networked Insights measures the way consumers have conversations about shows on the Web, whether by blogging, posting comments or simply reading comments.

SoulBounce: Your Move, Billboard

November 20, 2008

What? Billboard isn't that accurate? Get out. Though many people still listen to terrestrial radio, maybe even prefer to do so, it's clear that internet radio and social networking sites with music components have been on the rise for years now.

MediaPost: Networked Insights' Music Chart Challenges Traditional

November 19, 2008

While traditional music charts like Billboard determine song rankings, based on sales and radio airplay, Networked Insights' report attempts to offer a new take on music audience measurement by analyzing the millions of interactions occurring online everyday around the most popular songs.

Wired: People Like Different Music Online

November 19, 2008

Billboard still monitors airplay (and sales) to create its widely-cited music charts. However, a upstart called Networked Insights has issued a report claiming that on social networks and other interactive destinations, listeners prefer a different set of music than they do when listening to the radio or shopping for tunes to purchase. Networked Insight's chart looks at how people interact with popular music online -- posting it on blogs, sharing it with each other, linking to the songs and so on. It differs significantly from the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Networked Insights concludes, "it's clear that the online audience is one unto itself and should be viewed and marketed to that way."

DMNews: TV Shows Find Boost with Social Networks

November 5, 2008

Social networks are playing an increasingly important role in driving the popularity of television shows and should be factored into the weekly TV rankings, a new report by Networked Insights concludes. Networked Insights adds in its new Measuring the Social report that five of the most popular TV shows among online audiences are not even in the Nielsen Top 10 weekly ratings. Mediabistro also asks Is Nielsen Missing The Online Numbers?

Accelerate Madison: Podcast: Measure & Monetize the Customer-Controlled Internet

November 5, 2008

The Internet is no longer a walled garden, and if your enterprise is struggling with "what to do with social media?" you are not alone. This podcast with CEO Dan Neely was done in September 2008 at an Accelerate Madison event.

Forbes: I Want My Non-Nielsen TV

October 30, 2008

Everything you know about what's hot on television may be wrong. Wisconsin-based start-up Networked Insights released a study this week challenging the Nielsen Company's ratings system by measuring what's being talked about online. Download the full report posted on the Social Sights blog.

TVWeek: Cracking the Code to Put Online Dollars Where They Belong

October 29, 2008

Networked Insights measures not just the 15% of people who post content online at social sites, but also the other 85% who are interacting with that content by reading, ratings sharing, linking or inviting. The company chose to show off how its system works with a "Measuring the Social" report focused on broadcast television shows. It compares the shows Nielsen reports as the most watched during the week of Sept. 22 with the ones generating the most conversations online. Turns out the lists are very different. TVNewsday also ran a story.

Social Sights: Networked Insights' Television Ratings Report Causes a Stir

October 28, 2008

Networked Insights has released Measuring the Social Report #1: Network Television Ratings. The study compares broadcast TV viewership with the level of social interaction that takes place around specific TV shows on the Web. It demonstrates that the two are not tightly correlated — if not completely unrelated. This study is making quite a splash: it's already been covered by NewTeeVee, Wired, Mashable, TechCrunch, Adotas, and DigitalHive.

Networked Insights: Networked Insights Entered in Forrester 2008 Groundswell Awards

September 19, 2008

Forrester's Groundswell Awards entries represent excellent and effective use of social technologies to advance an organizational or corporate goal. Networked Insights entered a case study outlining their successes with The Guild's Artful Community site. The entry is in the Listening category: finding out what customers are really saying in order to understand them better. The contest is still open for comments and ratings; winners will be announced at Forrester's Consumer Forum in Dallas on October 28 and 29.

Shop.org: Shop.org Podcast

September 16, 2008

An audio Interview with Dan Neely after his roundtable presentation, Cracking the Social Commerce Code, at Shop.org. Vahe Katros interviews Dan about working with NetShops, social commerce, and using social media to gather insights and customer sentiment.

Adotas: Influencers Are Our Holy Grail

September 11, 2008

Research indicates that only 15 percent of people in social networks actually contribute content, so only mining that data would mean you are missing out on the other 85 percent that are reading, rating, sharing and inviting. By understanding who the primary influencers are and where the consumer is engaging, we enable highly effective ad buys – Engagement-based advertising, if you will.

Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Frank LaRosa Promoted to Networked Insights Leadership Team

August 21, 2008

Networked Insights announced that Frank LaRosa has been promoted as Vice President of Development. In his new role, Frank leads the engineering team in building out and improving Customer Intelligence technology. In addition, he now participates on Networked Insights' Leadership Team. Frank brings years of experience in software development to this position; he's lived through the progression of social networks, having created and marketed Searchlight, a computer BBS platform that is similar to today's social networks. Before joining Networked Insights as a senior developer, he worked at Industry Connection and gaming powerhouse Electronic Arts.

MediaPost: The Real Value of Engagement

August 20, 2008

What qualifies as engagement? What doesn't? Can engagement really even be a measure of campaign success? When we get into subjective views and analysis of engagement, the value of what's really going on becomes fuzzy and more difficult to understand. But if we go back a few steps in the social media marketing process to the point of customer intelligence gathering, it's here that engagement delivers clear value before marketers even spend a dime.

Marketing 2.0: Interview with Daniel Neely on The Backyard

August 18, 2008

Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights, answers questions from conversational marketing blogger Valeria Maltoni about Networked Insights' work with Netshops and their outdoor-focused customer community, The Backyard.

Adotas: Building a Virtual Backyard for NetShops

August 5, 2008

"Networked Insights' platform has given us a great way to engage our customers in The Backyard. This will not only improve our customer experience, but will allow us to listen to our customers in real time to help us discover new ways to consistently meet our customers' needs," said Ash ElDifrawi, chief marketing officer of NetShops."

CenterNetworks: Networked Insights Partners with NetShops on Online Intelligence

August 5, 2008

Networked Insights has announced a partnership with NetShops to create an outdoor-focused community, "The Backyard." The goal of the partnership and the new social community is to create social intelligence about how users are engaging with the community. Networked Insights will also map the data from The Backyard with third- party social networking sites to create a clearer picture of what people are talking about both inside and outside the social community.

MediaPost: If a Tree Falls in the Forest...

July 31, 2008

"If someone makes a reference to your Web site through a social media platform, and you don't know that it exists, does it still make an impact?" If you are interested in keeping a pulse on your company's online reputation, the answer to that question is probably yes. The impact of social media content, whether it is a blog post, a bookmark on digg, a Twitter comment or an online consumer review, is clearly growing in significance for both the consumer and for those of us whose job it is to "own" our company's brand."

BrainReactions: What's All the Fuss About "Engagement"?

July 1, 2008

There has been a lot of recent talk about "Engagement." Engagement is the new metric for social media, the measure of success for social media marketing. But what is engagement? As soon as social media started to change the way people communicate and share interests, values or concerns, it became a gold mine of customer intelligence and insight. The key to unlocking this intelligence is to understand engagement.

RSS Ray: Engagement as the Measure in Social Media

June 4, 2008

Social media is a gold mine of customer intelligence, if you have the strategy and tools to understand the insights. The key to unlocking this intelligence is understanding engagement. Measuring social media also can unlock innovative approaches to marketing, media, product development, and overall customer relationships.

wsRadio: Customer Driven Market Research For Growth and Profit (podcast)

June 4, 2008

RSS Ray speaks with Dan Neely about customer-driven market research, using tools like social media, web analytics and customer intelligence to help grow profits and lifetime customer value.

Buzz Marketing for Technology: Riding the Groundswell of Social Media (podcast with Charlene Li)

June 2, 2008

Have you read “Groundswell?” Author Charlene Li talks about Social Media tactics in a conversation with Paul Dunay. Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and reediting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — that has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. Most companies see the groundswell as a threat. But you can see it as an opportunity!

ComputerWorld: Customer Service 2.0: Clients become brand managers

May 28, 2008

Companies must listen and respond to customers in a Web 2.0 world or risk losing them to those that do. For example, The Artful Home, which sells art and other home decorating items, significantly changed the content on its Web site based on user suggestions. By monitoring the number of customers participating in specific discussion topics and analyzing the content they posted, the company found that they are mostly interested in how to use the products they buy in design and decorating projects. The company gained an understanding of the desires of its online customers by using Networked Insights to analyze the content posted to its eight-month-old online customer community.

Community 2.0 Conference: Community 2.0 Podcast

May 14, 2008

In this podcast conversation, CEO Dan Neely explains why companies using social media and building online communities should focus on “passion and pain points.” Dan recently led a session at the Community 2.0 conference called “Customer Engagement: The New Metric and What it Means to Your Business.”

MediaPost’s Marketing Daily: Low-hanging fruit can feed brands well into the future

April 16, 2008

The research reveals that early adopters are implementing social media in their organizations at a rate 500% faster than wait-and-see marketers. “The ultimate value for a company is the low-hanging fruit areas,” says Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights. “For a company like John Deere, a community is just a means to an end—a way for them to understand what’s going on inside the community they serve, to make the company more efficient,” he says.

New York Post: To unite workers, companies start their own web-style networks

April 14, 2008

With social networking sites booming in popularity, especially among the younger set, the corporate world is following suit, creating internal networks for employees modeled on Web communities. Companies including IBM, Best Buy, Xerox, Dow Chemical and even the buttoned-down accounting firm Deloitte have introduced networks.

DM News: Networked Insights allows social data mining

March 31, 2008

The Networked Insights program can now mine third-party social networks, such as MySpace and company-branded portals, for consumer data. Users can see information on customer behavior, sentiments and engagement in real time.

MRWeb: Social Media Analytics Tool Enhanced

March 27, 2008

Recently launched Networked Insights — which gathers customer intelligence from social networking sites — has upgraded its Customer Insight Platform to provide a real-time window into customer behaviour.

The Washington Post: Service aims to mine social networks for consumer insight

March 26, 2008

Networked Insights crunches social network data to draw insights into factors ranging from its customers’ brand recognition and reputation to a user’s relative influence.

Computerworld: Hosted tool helps companies study online opinions about products, services

March 26, 2008

A new hosted service launched today will allow companies to glean “customer intelligence ” from content about them posted by their customers across various social networks along with the responses to that content. The new Customer Insight Platform from Networked Insights Inc. uses natural language processing to measure customer interaction and engagement on company-operated online communities and on social networks like MySpace.

The Social, CNET News Blogs: Networked Insights: A peek at social-media analytics

March 26, 2008

Earlier this week I spoke with representatives from Networked Insights, a Madison, Wisc., company that tracks social network data and works it into analytics and “customer intelligence ” for clients. It’s a niche that might raise a few eyebrows for its watching-your-every-move nature, but let’s face it — there are search analytics and blog analytics, so we shouldn’t be a bit surprised that social network analytics are starting to take off.

Adotas: Networked Insights Boosts Its Customer Insights Tool

March 26, 2008

Networked Insights today announced a new level of functionality to the Networked Insights technology platform. Companies will be provided with a deeper level of customer intelligence mined from interactions across all social media applications, including the lion’s share of third-party social networks.

Buzz Marketing for Technology: Build Your Research Network Before You Need It (podcast with Dan Neely)

January 14, 2008

I spoke with Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights and an advocate of customer-driven market research. I got a chance to ask him how customer-driven research works and how the best companies are taking themselves out of the center of research efforts and putting their best customers there.

BusinessWeek: Market Research for Small Businesses

January 10, 2008

Dan Neely, Networked Insights’ founder, says companies value being able to gather information directly from their communities. “It’s not just small businesses, but businesses all over are looking for tools to let them do the research themselves,” he says. The online community provides that tool, he says.

BtoB Magazine: Forrester issues market research predictions for 2008

January 4, 2008

Forrester projects that traditional market research firms will suffer this year as more large companies move market research in-house using do-it-yourself technologies.

Best Engaging Communities: What Have You Learned From Your Community Lately?

December 28, 2007

Here’s the key point that I learned from Dan: Do you want a community for “community sake” — because everyone else is doing it? Or do you want to really engage and learn from customers and are going to use the community as a platform to do so?

Marketing Profs: How to Use Social Media for Search Engine Optimization

December 4, 2007

Social SEO — tapping into how [customers] talk about you and your industry so that you can determine how they will search — is the most effective and foolproof way to master that art/science/guessing game of picking keywords.

Mashable: Movable Type’s New Publishing Platform: Does It Need Ad Options As Well?

November 3, 2007

We’ve seen with Networked Insights how this level of social media engagement and interaction can be used towards market research, and in turn utilized for improved ad networks.

ClickZ: Artful Home Mines Customer Forums to Decide Web Strategy

November 21, 2007

[Networked Insights] is like walking into a room with 500 of your customers sitting together and listening to their conversation. What a gift that is.

iMedia Connection: Move from Eyeballs to Interactions

November 19, 2007

As new web technologies continue to add an element of participation and influence for web users, a new metric is needed to encapsulate how people’s discussions and communication with each other is affecting your brand, and ultimately, revenue. This new metric is interactions.

TechCrunch: The New Focus Group

November 15, 2007

Being able to capture all of these discussions and mine them for meaning make them potentially more powerful than any focus group.

MarketingShift: Community Powered Market Research

November 8, 2007

Startup Networked Insights has launched a new online platform for building community around brands, with the twist that the conversation are automatically mined for market research data.

Venture Beat: Networked Insights Offers New Internet Market Research

November 7, 2007

Networked Insights thinks it can do a better job of measuring public opinion than traditional companies like ACNielsen, by leveraging the Internet’s crowd power. If true, the decades-old market research industry could be in for a shakeup. The company has just raised $4 million in financing.

Wisconsin Technology Network: Networked Insights launched with $4 million capital investment

November 7, 2007

Networked Insights, a new market research firm, has formally announced its company launch along with the closing of series A funding of $4 million from Kegonsa Capital, a Madison-based venture capital firm.

Research Magazine: Social Network Boom Fuels Research 2.0 Initiatives

August 28, 2007

Networked Insights is named one of two new companies that are taking advantage of social networking technologies to enhance consumer-based research.

Wisconsin State Journal: Firm to Offer Research Gained from Social Networks

August 24, 2007

Networked Insights offers real-time market research gathered through social networks for consumers. Having raised $1 million in capital, with commitments for another $4 million in preparation for its website launch in September, Networked Insights is poised to be the leader in next generation marketing research companies.

iMedia Connection: Socialize Your Site for Better Insights

August 16, 2007

Networked Insights CEO, Daniel Neely, explains how your site can be transformed into a database of customer insights. Focus groups and surveys are research techniques of the past; the future lies in word-of-mouth strategies that have adopted to Web 2.0. By harnessing the power of these conversations, companies have the ability to hear their customers’ sentiments and take action on them.