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Tracking the Blogosphere: Umbria Communications Unveils Hot
Topics, Trends and Brands among Generation
Boulder, Col. – (October 31, 2007) – Umbria Communications, a company that collects the
unsolicited opinions and perceptions of the online community and turns them into
actionable market intelligence, today announced new data on the likes, dislikes and
purchasing habits of Generation Y. This data was collected using Umbria’s unique
natural language processing and machine learning technology that monitors and
analyzes information from more than 10 million blogs, online chats and message boards
several times an hour.
Generation Y is the primary voice of the blogging community, representing more than 40
percent of all blog postings as of May 1, 2005. Generation Y is defined as men and
women born between 1978 and 1995, currently aged 10 to 27. Members of generation Y
are generally early adopters and are twice as likely as the general population to
influence the opinions of others in areas of life, such as what products to use, what
entertainment to see, what politicians to vote for and where to eat. What’s more,
Generation Y represents 77.9 million people in the United States with a buying power of
$625 billion annually.
Umbria Communications’ Generation Y findings as of May 1, 2005 include:
• Despite overcoming a rape trial, Kobe Bryant remains among the most popular
basketball players in terms of positive mentions indicating his fans have forgiven
him or are able to look past the accusations. His approval is particularly high
among Generation Y males (63 percent positive mentions).
• Starbucks is the most mentioned non-alcoholic (coffee, tea or soft drink)
beverage brand in the blogosphere, which is ironic for a brand that spends little
money on advertising compared to Coke and Pepsi, the second and third most
mentioned brands, which have the largest advertising budgets on the planet.
• McDonald’s is the most mentioned quick serve dining brand (41 percent of
mentions) by over a two-to-one margin. Wendy’s (20 percent) and Taco Bell (16
percent) are the next most mentioned brands. While McDonalds is most often
mentioned, other quick serve brands are perceived as either using better
ingredients (Wendy’s) or providing more variety for the money (Taco Bell).BOULDER, Colo.
Generation Y females converse more online about beer brands than their male
counterparts with 54 percent of mentions of the top five beer brands coming from
women. Incidentally, Guinness is the preferred brand among Generation Y,
accounting for approximately 42 percent of mentions.
• Britney Spears was the most mentioned celebrity in the blogosphere by almost a
two to one margin (51 percent) relative to the top five. Britney Spears had the
highest percentage of positive mentions when compared to the rest of the “teen
queens” (Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff). Jessica Simpson is the
only “teen queen” conversed about more favorably than Britney Spears.
To identify the above Generation Y data, Umbria first identified the top five brands,
products and people in each of the categories. Umbria then used a combination of natural language processing and machine learning technologies to analyze the speech
and blogger demographics of all blogs relating to the topics.
Commenting on the above trends, and of mining the blogosphere in general, Howard
Kaushansky, CEO of Umbria, says: “Why introduce bias into your research with focus
groups? Today, the blogosphere is providing a completely unfiltered forum for consumer
opinions, and the companies that are able to quickly understand and adapt to these
shifts will reap the benefits. By listening to the blogosphere, companies are able to study
how people perceive and interact with their brand, the strengths and weaknesses of a
new product or ad campaign, and the moves of a competitor. There’s really no end to
the kinds of questions the blogosphere can answer.”
Umbria provides Fortune 500 companies with data to identify brand health, product
success, red flags and overall competitive intelligence by demographic subgroup on a
daily, weekly or monthly basis, giving them the opportunity to immediately act on
changing trends and behaviors.
About Umbria
Umbria is unique in its ability to assess both what is being said, and who is doing the speaking in the online world. Umbria’s patent-pending technology enables the company to classify posts and estimate gender and age of the speaker, as well as rapidly identify and eliminate bogus spam posts. Umbria analyzes voices of the online community by using proprietary Natural Language Processing and machine learning algorithms to dissect the who, what and why of online opinion, offering in-depth insights for some of the world’s leading brands. For more information on Umbria, please visit www.umbrialistens.com.
No advertising or other promotional use can be made of the information in this release without the express prior written consent of J.D. Power and Associates. www.jdpower.com/corporate
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