Mining the Deep Web: Message Board Content

Effyis, Inc., aka BoardReader, monitors over 2.5 million English-language message board posts per day, and an equal number of non-English ones. This is what might be called the ”deep web”, since it is content that is not covered by most search engines. As marketers become more aware of the importance of consumer generated media, it's clear that some of the most actionable insights are coming from within the threads of message board conversations. A quick look at BoardReader search results regarding the recent Dell laptops/ Sony batteries recall reveals highly opinionated users weighing in on the issues from investor forums, Dell users groups, and computer game enthusiast boards. Compared to the posts you might find in a Technororati or BlogPulse search using the same keywords, you find more coherent opinions and many fewer splogs.

This breakthrough content aggregation solution has valuable applications in a number of areas:
• Brand Management: monitor and measure corporate reputation and brand value
• Product Management – receive highly focused opinion of the heaviest users of your products and services
• Competitive Intelligence – track the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors through the unsolicited comments of this “virtual focus group”
• Mainstream Media - enrich and freshen news sites with new message board postings that comment on your own content or on the most popular news topics of the day

BoardReader is also building an application to monitor product review sites, but more on that later. For more information, and a demo, email me: bert.carelli@comcast.net

- Bert