Are You Being Watched?

For those of you who are more than a bit paranoid about being watched on the internet, this company and their statics are about to make you grab for your tinfoil hats.  While you may not have heard of Crimson Hexagon they have probably heard of you, sort of.  They are a Boston based analytics firm that has collected, stored and indexed more than 1 trillion public Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram posts since it started in 2008.  While it may sound kind of creepy to the average eye it is actually an amazing resource for companies. 

Crimson Hexagon has customers ranging from major tech companies to asset management firms to government agencies.  How it works is they compile their data on what conversations are trending on social media.  You see, data isn’t all numbers, it comes in the form of words as well.  They analyze conversations on social media to help advise these companies.  These companies can see if their marketing campaign is being spoken about in a positive or negative way, or if it is being talked about at all.  They’ve helped with predicting stock markets by being able to provide data on what people are saying about a company’s earnings on social to then help predict how that stock will perform.  Stephanie Newby, Crimson Hexagon’s CEO, told MarketsInsider that “Social media analytics is increasingly important because now people are asking more strategic questions” other than how many followers, such as “Do customers really care that this product has been recalled and will it stop them from purchasing the next one?”

While this can be unbelievably useful for companies, I would still go check those privacy settings…