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Ah, Oscar season. Everyone is abuzz with movie talk all around me these days. “Wasn’t Sean Penn great?” “Wasn’t the first 20 minutes of Slumdog intense?” “You look so much like Kate Winslet!” and on and on. I am launching a company and I have two small kids at home, so of course I have seen NONE of the best picture nominated films. But to effectively participate in the movie banter, I decided to investigate the blogosphere and see if I can come up with a POV.

I created a search for Oscar Predictions, so we’re looking at all posts talking about Oscar picks, predictions, etc. In our Frequent Words module, we identify the most frequently mentioned words within those Oscar-predicting posts. A month ago, The curious Case of Benjamin Buttons was the blogosphere’s “pick” (at least the most mentioned film), followed by Milk and Nixon, with Slumdog Millionaire lower down the list.

But looking at the same search this week, you will see that Slumdog buzz is growing and is now topping the rest:

Continuing in the same vane, this week the blogosphere picks Kate Winslet and Mickey Rourke to win.

Vegas odds makers may not be tracking social media (maybe they should), but they’re also picking Slumdog Millionaire (as well as Kate and Mickey) for the win.

So I may not have seen the films, but at least now I’ve now got a perspective to share with the other parents at pre-school drop-off on Monday morning.

The team over at Focus Features have had their eye on social media buzz for many months now — keeping a close eye on the conversations around their critically acclaimed film Milk. For months, they have been using Scout Labs to watch Oscar-talk about Milk and Sean Penn building, so the five Oscar nominations last week were hugely exciting — best actor, best picture, best original screenplay, best original score, and achievements in editing! But the celebration was short-lived as they now tune their searches to best picture picks and Oscar predictions. We’re crossing fingers for you, Focus Features!

Photo Source: Celeb9.com

I was at Organic today and was very impressed by the team and the work they are doing to help brands think outside the traditional marketing boxes. They are encouraging companies to work to earn their brands and to do so across as many channels as possible.  At Organic, insight always starts with listening to customers, so they were very excited to get their hands on Scout Labs, which can help them systematically tune in to the voice of the customer out across the Internet for all their clients.

UPDATE: Organic is now using Scout Labs to deliver on its promise of listening, empathy and insight. In doing so, has discovered a whole new revenue stream. Their social media monitoring offering is a growing part of their revenue mix and allows them to add value for clients on an ongoing and strategic level.

Marketing is not the only thing in the throes of revolution. The old customer service mentality of waiting for the customer to come to you needs an update as well. StubHub is a beta user of Scout Labs and they are definitely taking a fresh approach to customer service.

Service is incredibly important to StubHub and they have a huge team of reps ready and eager to take care of calls and emails when they come in. But inbound call volume have been dropping in recent years, even while customers and revenues increase. The reason? Customers have additional channels for expressing their frustration these days. If someone buys tickets that are invalid, customers are starting to turn to blogs, Twitter, and message boards before they pick up the phone. Now, by seeking out complaints and problems expressed in social media, StubHub’s service team is proactively solving customer problems — a move that is surprising and delighting customers.

Scout Labs experiences this ourselves — no matter how often we give out our customer service contact information, we often find user questions and problems on blogs or on Twitter first.  Of course, by using our own product, we find them right away and take care of them, but it’s a brave new world indeed.

Photo source: www.gatorboosters.org

In a research-obsessed organization like Netflix, there is no such thing as too much data. The company relies heavily on traditional market research, but wanted to augment it with social media insights because the net that social media casts is wider, and the results more immediate.

The company now uses Scout Labs to monitor many topics. They have searches that are broad (Netflix, main products, new features, competitors) and searches that are specific, like “I wish Netflix would…” to keep a real-time pulse on priority customer features and fixes. They have been surprised to find some very juicy feedback coming via Twitter!

Social media is not just something to count. In the aggregate, we call it “buzz” but it’s actually the voices of many real and potential customers, and they are often offering feedback to product teams and hints to marketing teams. We just need to tune in. Social media monitoring — its not just for PR any more.

Photo source: www.ruralitybytes.files.wordpress.com

Marin county had a teacher training day yesterday, crowding the commuter ferry with teenagers headed to the city for the day. I was crammed into a booth seat with five of them. Most of their conversation revolved around themselves and the remainder of their high school careers: who was going to college, who wasn’t, who was failing English, who was dating whom (only dating wasn’t exactly the word used), all conveyed with that teenage langour that is supposed to communicate just how little they care about anyone, how little they are shocked by anything, how very boring the world is to sophisticated sixteen year olds such as themselves.

And all of them carried phones. “Ryan’s meeting us at Peet’s in the ferry building,” says one to the group. Conversation shifted to Ryan for all of 30 seconds before “Al Franken won his senate seat by 215 votes!” said another. Conversation shifted in the Al Franken direction for another minute or so (“Who’s Al Franken?” asked a young woman whose outfit suggested the desire to evolve into more of a Donna Rice kind of politician). “My mom says me to be home by 7. Can you believe it?” “Shell says she’s driving in but she doesn’t know where to park.” “Dylan thinks we should see an IMAX. Lemme just see what Caitlin is doing…” murmured another young lad, all of them texting away on devices seemingly integrated into the palms of their hands.

Which is just what they are, of course. Fully integrated. Not with those particular hardware devices, but into the fabric of a world that provides the instant access to people and information via technology. My nanny’s sixteen year old kid routinely incurs mobile phone bills she can’t pay because 2000 text messages a month is “not enough.” As I understand it, she is far from alone. The speed and quantity with which teenagers create and consume these microbits of information seems astonishing to all us oldsters still tapping away at spreadsheets on the way to our job-jobs in the city.

But then again, maybe not. All humans are all social creatures. The main limitation on how often we connect, at any age, is our means of doing it. My 65 year old dad is still figuring out Vchat. Throughout my workday I am treated to glimpses of him cursing at the computer as he invites, disconnects, and reconnects: waltonjf has invited you to chat. “Hello? Margaret? Is it-” waltonjf has left the chat. waltonjf has invited you to chat. “G-dammit! How can you tell if-” waltonjf has left the chat. waltonjf has invited you to chat. My 80 year old neighbor types three sentence messages on yellowing index cards and leaves them stuck in the doors of people in the neighborhood, a sort of old-school Twitterer. She often watches for me to come home at night and knocks on my door for a glass of pink wine if I make it home during cocktail hour. Over Christmas, I visited my 95 year old grandmother at her home in Virginia. She is physically very fragile but still compos mentis. She told me that email was becoming difficult for her to manage, what with her vision and the arthritis in her hands, and not to expect emails from her any more. My eyes filled with tears.

“They’ll be coming from Zee’s grandson instead,” she said, beckoning forward her middle aged Ethiopian caretaker. Shyly the woman showed me a picture of her roughly 10 year old grandson. Buck teeth, black skin, intelligent eyes, a sweet smile and ears like giant antennae. “He comes over to use the computer after school. Are you on something called Facebook?”

Long live her inner teenager.