Harris looks to tap the social media 'lifestream' of survey respondents
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US— Sometimes in social media research it is hard to discern the person behind the username. Harris Interactive hopes to have found a solution to this problem by recruiting its online panellists to a new ‘lifestreaming’ platform.
The approach gives Harris the ability to match panellist profile data with the comments, updates and opinions being posted to social media sites.
“In social media research there are lots of ideas about what is being said, but not many ideas about who is saying it,” said Michael Saxon, senior vice president of new products.
Harris Poll participants are currently being asked to sign up to share their social media activity with Harris, allowing the company to capture and analyse information from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Hi5, YouTube, Bebo, MySpace, QQ, Bubblemotion and LinkedIn.
Respondents are also being asked to enter details about which blogs and online forums they participate in so content from those sites can be analysed too.
Harris says it plans to integrate data from social media postings and discussions with traditional market research, such as online surveys and private online communities. Specific details of the service remain under wraps for the time being.
Research Lifestreaming is currently in a pre-launch phase and is set to go live in June.
Readers' comments (1)
Beth Rounds | 6-May-2010 2:59 pm
This is very interesting and a much needed solution. Integrating all of these data streams is no small task. I am wondering what type of analyst you are hiring or using to bring all of this together?
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