Wonkosphere.com Uses Technology to Make Sense of Presidential Campaign Buzz

August 24, 2007 — www.crawdadtech.com [Crawdad Technologies, LLC]], a leader in extracting insight from social media, today launched www.wonkosphere.com [Wonkosphere.com]]. The free web service uses patented text analysis technology to scour thousands of political blogs and analyze what is being said, who is saying it, and whether they're ranting or raving. Wonkosphere analysis is computed without human intervention using natural language processing algorithms, providing uniquely unbiased analysis of presidential candidates' buzz share and the tone of the discourse.

{InsertImage}

"The influence of political blogging will be profound in this presidential election, and no candidate can afford to ignore it," said Steven Corman, professor at Hugh Downs School of Communication at Arizona State University (ASU) and co-founder of Crawdad Technologies, "Wonkosphere.com taps into that powerful nexus of political buzz and makes sense of it. It is a real-time scorecard for which candidate is winning the battle of the blogs."

Wonkosphere.com is a free service intended for political writers, bloggers, media, and political junkies—anyone who wants to stay on top of the '08 election but can't afford to spend all day searching for the most relevant material. It is also a showcase for Crawdad's Listening Post technology, a customized web service that monitors buzz about any product, brand, celebrity, or issue of interest.

Wonkosphere.com measures which candidate is winning share of online buzz as well as whether the tone of that buzz is positive or negative. The site updates every four hours with the latest posts, organized by candidate. It also lists hot links posted in multiple blog entries, the blogs that are "one step ahead" of the pack, and the most representative posts for the past day.

Analytics within Wonkosphere.com are generated by Centering Resonance Analysis (CRA), a network text analysis technology developed at Arizona State University. It applies natural language processing techniques to convert large amounts of text into networks, and then analyzes these networks to determine the relative importance of all the words in the text. At Wonkospehere.com, CRA analysis determines how much any given post is about a particular candidate, and how positive or negative the writing is. CRA has been shown in research to represent the "collective consciousness" of how an audience interprets a text, and has been shown to be more accurate than simple "word counting" methods. Crawdad's development of CRA has been funded, in part, by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Visit Wonkosphere at www.wonkosphere.com]. Wonkosphere products and services are provided by Crawdad Technologies, LLC.

About Wonkosphere
Wonkosphere is designed for bloggers, media, political activists, and political junkies who need to stay on top of the 2008 Presidential race but can't spend all day searching for the hottest and most relevant material. Wonkosphere provides an analysis of the political buzz that is timely and unbiased. Wonkosphere is different from other sites because it tracks over a thousand blogs and web sites per day, more than any human can read. Its patented technology text analysis technology measures each candidate's buzz share and tone in conservative and liberal blogs, and highlights the most representative and linked posts.

About Crawdad Technologies
Crawdad Technologies, LLC is the leader in extracting insight from social media. Crawdad Listening Hubs and Posts monitor blogs, social networks, web sites, discussion boards, news media, and periodicals to tell you how brands, products, celebrities, or issues are being talked about. Crawdad uses patented natural language technology to measure content, sentiment, and focus. Listening Post customers include Cold Stone Creamery, Cercone, Brown, & Curtis PR, and the Arizona Republic. Crawdad's desktop text analysis product is used by over 100 colleges and universities. www.crawdadtech.com

###