Why we created SocialNuggets.Net? Technology behind our analytics on smartphones

SocialNuggets delivers real time market intelligence for fast moving industries by analyzing data from various social media sources. Our mission is to liberate social media data and sentiment analysis for use in real time research of brands, products and features.

This blog post discusses the following:

• Changing landscape of marketing research
• Current approach
• Technology requirements
• How does SocialNuggets work?
• Summary

Changing landscape of market research

In the fast moving markets like smartphones, tablets, apparel and entertainment, traditional market research techniques like surveys and focus groups are just too slow and can’t be relied upon exclusively to make effective business decisions.  Today, most consumers express their opinions voluntarily on various forums, blogs, review sites and social networking sites. This data, if mined correctly, is a goldmine of consumer sentiments and opinions and can serve as a source of real time market intelligence and that  has been a missing piece in the market research area despite many advances in technology.

Current Approach

There are many enterprise software packages available that can be customized with lots of efforts and resources to get the right answers for a particular industry/company. Needless to say, this is expensive, time consuming, generally offered as an enterprise software behind firewall and not affordable even for many large companies.

Technology Requirements

In order to analyze this vast amount of Internet data we call social data, one needs the following tools and technologies

• Focused Harvesting
• Text Analytics
• Natural Language Processing
• Sentiment Analysis

As an example, we analyze over 1M conversations quarterly on the web related to smartphones, get rid of spam using our technology and then extract sentiments by

• Features (like long battery life is positive while long charging time is negative)
• Phone models (like HTC EVO, Apple iPhone 4)
• Brands (like HTC, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson)
• Category (Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Phone)

Our technology, developed over 20 man-years of effort, has been used by many companies for marketing research, customer service, lead generation and brand management.

How does SocialNuggets work?

In order to make our technology accessible to companies of all sizes with least amount of upfront investment, we have started SocialNuggets.net that provides detailed research from social media in various forms as following:

Individual nuggets that anyone can consume by embedding inside of their websites or forwarding to their friends and colleagues – this is free so long as you maintain attribution to SocialNuggets and/or Our partners

Monthly and Quarterly SocialNuggets Index for various markets which can also be used to make purchasing decisions

Data behind individual nuggets that can be purchased for internal analysis

Full data warehouse for internal analysis by companies’ internal business analytics package

Reports and Customized research reports created by our staff/our partners

Summary

We have started this site with research on smartphones and are adding new nuggets daily for anyone in this industry to consume, enjoy, share and engage in making fast but smarter business decisions.

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Saving money on Wireless Roaming with Android, Blackberry and iPhone from USA to UK

I was planning to go on vacation to the UK for about 10 days and so looked for various articles to point me to the most economical way to roam in the UK for three of our family phones running on Android, Blackberry and iPhone. I didn’t find a lot of useful information before going there but learnt some useful information on my trip that I want to share in this blog and hope anyone traveling from the USA to UK will find it useful. I also think the same information will apply to other European countries as well.

So, here are various considerations in making the right decision on selecting your roaming service provider.

• US Mobile Operator’s Roaming Pricing
• Is your handset capable of Roaming?
• Is your handset Carrier Locked?
• Duration of trip
• Voice Roaming
• Data Roaming – Android and iPhone
• Data Roaming – Blackberry

US Mobile Operator’s Roaming Pricing

AT&T, Sprint , T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless all offer international voice roaming and their rates vary from $1 to $2/minute.  Additionally, data roaming charges are in the range of $1-$1.50/MB. AT&T used to offer $69/Month unlimited data roaming for Blackberry but it not available anymore on its web site.

Is your handset capable of Roaming?

Most of handsets sold by AT&T and T-Mobile are capable of roaming on most of the networks in the UK and the rest of Europe. For handsets sold by Sprint and Verizon, only quadband 3G handsets are capable of roaming on the European networks.  Both Sprint and Verizon offer some Blackberry handsets that are quadband but none of the Android handsets on Sprint and Verizon websites are quadband and so unlikely to be suitable for roaming on GSM networks in Europe.

Is your handset Carrier Locked?

Most US mobile operators lock handsets in such a way that these subsidized handsets only work on their network. However, many operators offer unlock codes with AT&T and T-Mobile providing it free after 3 months of service except on iPhone. The good news for iPhone users is the availability of many public domain and paid tools to do carrier unlock which is not the same as jailbreak. In London, we could get this service from any of the  shops selling SIM cards for less than $10.

Duration of trip

If you are going on a business trip for a couple of days and not likely to visit the same country anytime soon, go with the plan offered by your mobile operator as the hassle of going on a pre paid plan is not worth the trouble unless you are going to be on the phone constantly.

Voice Roaming

If you only care about voice roaming then the best thing to do is to buy any local SIM card. Insert it into your unlocked GSM phone and you are in business. There are many voice plans with calls within UK costing over 25cents/min but offering less than 5cents/min calls to any international location including the US. The only downside is that you will have a new number but for the savings offered, it was worth taking the chance.

Data Roaming – Android and iPhone

I found T-Mobile SIM cards offering data services at a very reasonable price and configured automatically on all three phones I tried it on. On the other hand, O2 card didn’t work on my Android or Blackberry and every time I called the O2 operator, more money was taken out of my pre-paid account.The pre-paid T-Mobile SIM offered almost unlimited weekly data plan for less than $7.

Data Roaming – Blackberry

Most operators in the UK don’t support Blackberry on prepaid and if Blackberry/Outlook integrated email is needed, you have no choice but to stick with your US SIM card and pay for data roaming. However, I could get Internet connectivity on Blackberry and was able to access my Gmail and do browsing on it with T-Mobile SIM card.

Conclusion

If you are going to be roaming in the UK for more than couple of days, it is much more economical to use pre paid SIM than to pay large roaming fees to the US operators with only disadvantage being a new number. For Blackberry users, you can get voice and data roaming but not Blackberry messaging connectivity on a pre-paid SIM. For Android and iPhone users, pre paid SIM is the best economical option and gives you full connectivity at a very reasonable price.

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Android Market Share 28%, Google 10% and iPhone 21%. Should Google continue on its mobile path or change?

This week NPD released a report which had some encouraging report for Google’s Android which had 28% market share this quarter with iPhone’s 21% and Google’s Nexus One with 10% in the US. Finally, Android powered phones like Droid from Motorola and Droid Incredible from HTC are making inroads into Apple’s iPhone market because of the combined effect of good phones and a good network. Many iPhone enthusiasts will argue that these comparisons are not real since one phone is being pitted against 18 Android phones but that is the topic for a different blog.  The topic that I want to tackle in this blog is  – Can Android do even better and if so what should Google do before it is too late? I have owned and played with Nokia N series phones, Blackberry, Google’s G1, N1, Droid Incredible and iPhone.

Here are things I think Google should do if it wants to be a true leader in this space

1)   Reduce Fragmentation of Android

2)   Build phone for the masses and not just for tech savvy consumers

3)   Improve App Store Experience

4)   Leave hardware sales to OEMs

Reduce Fragmentation

Fragmentation = Too many versions, no defined minimum hardware spec, no defined minimum app set and incompatibilities across versions and vendors. Nokia is a prime example of a vendor whose customers and developers suffer everyday because of this issue while Apple enjoys almost zero fragmentation. Yes there is Linux but even that was organized by Redhat and couple of other vendors.

So, Google, please take a leadership role and put some discipline into various licensees, define and force some standards for the OEMs but maintain its open source, freely available advantages.

Build phone for the masses and not just for tech savvy consumers

I have used three generations of Android phones – G1, N1 and now HTC’s Incredible. Yes these phones are getting better with every release but Google needs to be improve Android’s usability for everyone. For doing most tasks, Android requires at least 2-3 times the number of clicks compared to an iPhone.  Being a tech savvy consumer, it didn’t take me long to get used to Android phone and get almost spoiled by the customization it offers.

So, Google, please hire some great UI folks who can mask the complexity for average user while keeping the customization advantages.

Improve App Store Experience

With the sales of Android going up, developers are happy and ready to look over many of the disadvantages of App Store. Monetization possibilities brings developers but actual easy monetization will keep them there. There are many forums just discussing issues after issues like mobile only availability, currency issues, poor discovery, lack of ability to send app links in blogs and others.

So, Google, please improve usability of App Store and make it easier to discover content and monetize while keeping control to the minimum.

Leave hardware sales to OEMs

After looking at what amazing additions HTC has done with its new Incredible phone and how OEMs have managed to make Android phones available through all operators in the US and abroad, it is high time Google abandons its own hardware sales and instead concentrate on doing the best in software that it is capable of. Yes, it should promote all OEMs and especially ones that are most innovative.

So, Google, please leave the hardware sales and manufacturing to your OEMs while you promote them and help them be successful.

Conclusion

Google has built an incredible software platform in Android which can be exploited fully by various handset manufacturers. Google should exercise some control in reducing fragmentation, improving usability, improving App store experience and leave hardware innovation to the handset vendors.

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5 missed opportunities by Google in launching Nexus One

It is no secret that Google’s launch of Nexus One phone was less than stellar. Google had so many opportunities to become a game changer in the mobile phone market but missed most of it either because it was in a hurry to launch or just didn’t think hard enough to be different from Apple’s iPhone and others. Here is a list of my Top5 opportunities they missed. Let me know what do you think?

1)   New Data only Phone – Google was Industry’s only hope for creating a data only phone i.e. a mobile phone that worked exclusively on the data network wherein voice was just a data service running on VOIP (voice over Internet protocol). With Google Voice it had a chance to do so but failed to deliver a new experience and instead chose to just add Google Voice this as another application something Skype has been doing on many phones for a long time.

2)   Worldwide Launch – No mobile phone manufacturer, except RIM in a limited way, has ever succeeded in launching a phone globally on the same day. Google came very close with availability on its web site but missed a part of US, China, India and Korea by not having all GSM and CDMA support at the same time.

3)   Pricing Model – Google had a great opportunity to create a low price smart phone and break the mobile operator’s hold on multi-year contracts in the western world where mobile phone is subsidized by the operator. It could have subsidized the phone for a while and create a new pricing model. It could have become an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) if that is what it took to pay for the phone. Instead Google did whatever everyone else did but settled on taking smaller margin between itself and its partner HTC.

4)   Speech as a New Interface – Google came close but only got to a beta or alpha stage for using Speech as a new interface on Mobile. Another missed opportunity!

5)   Getting rid of Bluetooth Headsets – Despite various new styles, very few people like their Bluetooth headset but are forced to use it due to various handsfree driving laws. Google seems to be getting close to eliminating them with a better audio design but wait -  it does need a Car Kit that according to Google is still not available. Again in a hurry to launch!

Bottomline, Google missed an opportunity to change the mobile industry and just became a me too player challenging Apple’s iPhone. What do you think?

R. Paul Singh

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