@article{350982,
      recid = {350982},
      author = {Hubbard, Douglas W.,},
      title = {Pulse the new science of harnessing Internet buzz to track  threats and opportunities / [electronic resource] :},
      publisher = {Wiley,},
      address = {Hoboken, N.J. :},
      pages = {1 online resource (xiii, 191 p.) :},
      year = {2011},
      note = {Includes index.},
      abstract = {"This book will introduce how the Internet can be used to  assess market trends and public opinion before the slower  and far more expensive, traditional government reports and  Gallup polls are published. It could be similar to having a  real-time "Dow Jones" index for buzz about a company or  confidence in the economy. The book will talk about how to  take this raw data and validate it using some traditional  methods without relying on them entirely in the future. It  will discuss how this will eventually effect business and  government in a much broader sense. For example, this tool  allows for a new kind of real-time decision analysis that  will greatly improve productivity. Pulse will describe how  most major decisions are made on information that was  actually available quite a long time prior to the beginning  of the analysis of the decision, nevermind the decision  itself. But real-time information about socio-economic  trends and public opinion will allow for a kind of  "programmed trading" for some decisions similar to how  trading firms automate buying and selling. Specific  examples include: Specific examples will incude: A Canadian  epidemiologist tracked Google searches on the phrase "flu  sympoms". He used this information to track flu outbreaks  faster than the Canadian health authorizes could keep up.  His success later inspired Google's "Flu Trends" tool.  Researchers at HP labs showed how tracking Twitter comments  about upcoming movies could reliably predict box office  success better than any other method. It will show how the  number of Google searches nationwide on the term  "unemployment" (publically available through "Google  trends") tracks very closely to Bearue of Labor Statistics  (BLS) unemployment reports. The difference is that BLS  releases its data monthly after samply 60,000 households  while Google trends data is available weekly and for free.  Research by Carnegie Mellon students show that tracking  Twitter comments produces nearly the same results for  consumer confidence and political polls as Gallup polls  would produce - except that the results are real-time and  free. I'll introduce the possibility that even tracking  auctions on ebay, ranks of books on Amazon, or job-seeking  websites may become the new way to track real time data  about the economy and trends in public opnion. LA County  detected (with 85% accuracy) collusive fraud rings in  public assistance programs based onn analysis of links in  social networks. "Semantic" analysis tools are even being  developed to process thousands of blogs and Facebook  comments that could be used to assess security threats like  potential terrorism"--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/350982},
}