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How a Facebook "Sentiment Engine" Could Be Huge

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Rumors of a Facebook “sentiment engine” analyzing aggregate user data, or a new form of the company’s Engagement Ads that offer rapid polling to advertisers, have been flying around the web in view of the fact that the start of this week’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland. The reality behind these rumors seems to be much less exciting (or creepy, depending on your perspective) than many people claimed – but we’d like to entertain some thoughts on just what Facebook could do with such a system.

Remember when Google published the most standard searches life performed during the Presidential debates? That represented a sea change in real-time awareness of what people care about. A Facebook “sentiment engine” has that same kind of potential, and we’d like to see some of this data be place to use in benefit of such innovation.

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Best Case: A Living History

Facebook is a place everywhere 150 million people are conversing in real time, with people that they know, about the world around them. Those conversations are vacant on primarily in text. While most of the discussions around a Facebook sentiment engine have referenced the collection of data through committed engagement in polls, here’s also a whole lot of passive discourse that could be mined in fascinating ways.

This author would gladly opt-in, especially through the kind of granular privacy controls that Facebook is so excellent about offering, to allow the company to add what I say on Facebook to a huge collection of data for analysis. Our individual identities need not be tied to our words, but the demographic data associated with our confirmed identities is invaluable.

Reckon of the non-commercial, public interest kind of data that could be bought. When the economic stimulus plot of 2009 was first announced on national television – what was the reaction of people in their mid twenties who lived in the Mid West of the US? Was that collective reaction substantially different from the reaction of self-identified queer people of color living in the North East US? How did the public reaction to the proposed plot change one hour, one day or one week after the announcement? This is all very fascinating and potentially vital data that could be, for the first time in history, available in near real time. Just by listening to what people are talking about in status updates and comments.

Privacy concerns are very vital, but with enough opt-in required, here could be a system set up that could funnel data straight from Facebook into the US Library of Congress or historical archives.

Facebook is one of very few companies we can reckon of with the access to public sentiment to make something like this take place – plus the imagination and willingness to carry on backlash for a excellent thought.

More Likely: Polls and Product Feedback

The above scenario is a pretty far-out one, unfortunately. Far more likely is that Facebook will go political polls and sell access to product feedback survey systems to advertisers. Those paths could be fascinating as well, though they fail to solve the problem of public discussion data running unused down the drain.

We’d like to see even these approaches used sincerely. Polls could be performed promptly, even as part of corporate crisis management processes, if companies have the guts and Facebook can handle the sales requirements. The age of quieting down a controversy are over – why not buy some polls on Facebook to see how real people are really responding to terrible news about your company?

Likewise, both committed and passive consumer sentiment about products could lead to some very cool features. RWW booklover Scott Aikin says he thinks a sentiment engine would work well in powering a consumer commodities search engine. I need a pair of headphones, which ones are most liked by my friends, people in my own demographic group or people who are older and wiser? I’ll do the search on Facebook and they can have affiliate revenue when I make a hold.

That sounds like a fantastic thought. Here are a number of fantastic thoughts that could be actualized by a Facebook “sentiment engine.” Most promising, though least likely, is a system for monitoring public reaction to historic actions. We have huge concerns about Facebook’s life a proprietary set of technologies, but we’re fascinated by the company and its potential at the same time. A Facebook sentiment engine would be like a real-time, hyper meticulous census – and as such Facebook must make freely available as much of the data it gathers as it can.

Will the company do anything like this? Only time will tell, but if 3 years ago we had told you that the Facebook Newsfeed would become the way that 150 million people found out when a friend’s relationship status changed, when a photo of a friend was posted online or when two people you knew were having a conversation – would you have believed it?

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