{"id":575,"date":"2009-08-27T18:01:26","date_gmt":"2009-08-28T01:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briantroy.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/27\/the-trouble-with-sentiment-analysis\/"},"modified":"2009-08-27T18:01:26","modified_gmt":"2009-08-28T01:01:26","slug":"the-trouble-with-sentiment-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/2009\/08\/27\/the-trouble-with-sentiment-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trouble with Sentiment Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been involved with Sentiment Analysis and AI processing of text for years (going on 15 now). It was a huge push back in the heyday of CRM with companies like Kana creating Automated Response Tools for email service and support. They were supposed to be magic – just have your customers free-form email your company and Kana would figure out what they wanted and respond with a Knowledge Base article. It was the service\/support holy grail. <\/p>\n

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Anyone heard of Kana lately?<\/div>\n

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Maybe you think I’m being an old guy… and I just don’t get it. Maybe you think the algorithms and increases in processing power have brought deriving sentiment and intent from text into the realm of the completely banal – it is easy, and anyone can do it. Maybe, but I’m a sceptic. And here is why.<\/div>\n

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How many times a week do you have to have a conversation with a family member, friend or colleague in which you attempt to explain what you really meant in that post, tweet, or email? <\/i><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n

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How often do you end up having 30 minute conversations because you were defining a key term differently? <\/div>\n

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How many times do you search on Google and get stuff you weren’t looking for?<\/div>\n

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Here is the thing, text is a HORRIBLE CONVEYOR OF SENTIMENT AND INTENT. The reality is humans have a really tough time deriving sentiment and intent from text – never-mind algorithms. Only the very best writers are able to consistently convey exactly what they meant to convey – and I’ll assure you it is because they used far more than 140 characters.<\/div>\n

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So when you see sentiment analysis being bounced around the Social Media echo chamber – before you buy in and start judging your company, product or brand based on some number spit out by a website, remember the last time you had to tell someone – “I know what I wrote, but that’s not what I MEANT” and proceed with caution.<\/div>\n

Posted via email<\/a> from briantroy’s posterous<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been involved with Sentiment Analysis and AI processing of text for years (going on 15 now). It was a huge push back in the heyday of CRM with companies like Kana creating Automated Response Tools for email service and support. They were supposed to be magic – just have your customers free-form email your… Continue reading The Trouble with Sentiment Analysis<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,1],"tags":[199,247],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogarchive.briantroy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}