Following on from my previous post about who are influential in the debate on Big Data I decided to have a look at how much attention some of the main players are drawing and how it has developed over time. Our market intelligence platform, InfluenceMonitor, has the answer (and keeps it up-to-date).
The chart below shows the Share-of-Influence (SoI) of 9 brands often associated with the Big Data debate.
SoI is the share of the mention, but with each mention weighed in with the measured influence (on the topic of Big Data) of the voice that makes the mention. The direction of SoI is often a leading indicator for the direction of market share.
The graph shows a number of interesting trends.
First, notice how Oracle has really done well in Q4 and Q1 (so far).
Second, HP seems to be losing out. The Autonomy deal announced in Q3 11 did seem to buck the negative trend in that quarter, but hasn’t helped in Q4 and Q1 12.
Third, McKinsey, a thought leader in the space, have grown their influence almost 9 fold from Q1 11 to Q1 12.
Looking at the graph the big question is clearly, “what did Oracle do that so dramatically moved the needle?”
Well, big data (sorry) helps answer the question.
Using the root-cause analysis function in InfluenceMonitor it turns out that the increase in Oracle’s SoI from Q3 to Q4 was driven by several factors. Oracle’s launch of their NoSQL database had a substantial impact and so did the fact that Day 2 of Oracle OpenWorld focused on Big Data and Analytics.
The attention to Oracle in Q1 12 was largely driven by its launch of Big Data Appliance and its partnership with Cloudera.
The screenshot below shows the Root-Cause Analysis in InfluenceMonitor. The box on the left shows what was driving growth from the first selected metric or period to the next. The right box shows what was pulling the metric the other way. So very quickly you get a good understanding of what was moving the needle.
Companies mentioned: Cloudera, HP, Mckinsey, SAS, Teradata, Microsoft, EMC, IBM, Oracle
Big Data is attracting increased attention these days and I had a quick look at who are the most influential stakeholders of the debate.
The list below shows the top 15 most influential stakeholders in the debate on Big Data.
There may not be many surprises. McKinsey is clearly getting credit for their recent excellent overview of the whole area.
Curt Monash (at #13) is the most influential individual.
Conferences play a big role. Strata Conference and GigaOM’s Structure conference draw a lot of attention and influence.
How to read the list (left to right): The arrow shows the most recent direction of movement and a star means they are new to the list. Example: NY Times is moving down the list and GigaOM is moving up.
Influence here is the relative punching weight of the individual stakeholder. Example: Since Oracle’s influence is about twice that of Forbes, communication on this issue from Oracle will have the twice the market impact than a similar message from Forbes.
Next column is Popularity, which is essentially a measure of how well-known a stakeholder is on the issue. GigaOM is the most well-known stakeholder on the issue, followed by NY Times and Techcrunch. So why are they not the most influential? Because those who cite those sources on this issue are on average less influential than those who cite for example Cloudera and Oracle.
The column Rel Influence shows how a stakeholder is punching in the debate, compared to what conventional wisdom (aka their popularity) leads us to believe. Notice how Curt Monash punches with 3 times the expected weight and Techcrunch punch below their expected weight. The explanation is simple. Those who cite Monash on this issue are, on average, much less influential than those who cite Techcrunch. Rel(ative) Influence is a great measure for identifying those who should be at the top of your engagement list.
Stakeholders listed: Cloudera, Oracle, New York Times, Strata Conference, GigaOM, ZDnet, EMC, IBM, Orilley, McKinsey, Wired, Techcrunch, Curt Monash, ReadWhiteWeb.com, Forbes.
The total list is of course very long (several thousand stakeholders have measurable influence on this topic).
Big Data is an area of natural interest to us at Onalytica, not least because we gobble up 100 TB of data per month, process it and make the aggregates available for continuously updated market intelligence throughout the enterprise.
I spotted an announcement yesterday in Brand Republic about Peugeot signing an actor by the name John Simm to voice over a 30-second TV spot.
The announcement reveals that this is a multi-million pound campaign to “move the Peugeot brand forward”.
At Onalytica we have a new service called BrandObjective, which, among other things, analyse how similar (or dissimilar) brands in or out of category, are perceived.
By looking at how John Simm is spoken about it is easy to see why Euro RSCG (the agency behind the campaign) picked him.
John Simm represents an attractive combination of street-cred, luxury, premiumness and Britishness.
Using a bit of rocket science maths (I am not kidding – Nasa use this method to classify space debris) you can calculate the probability that two brands are perceived similar.
John Simm is most similar to brands such as Pepsi (Street), Hermes (Luxury), Carlsberg (Street), Downton Abbey (British), Rolex (Luxury), Selfridges (Premium), Burberry (Luxury, British), Harrods (Luxury, British), Dyson (British, Premium), PG Tips (British) and – here it really comes – BMW.
While there is a probability of 95% that the brand properties of John Simm are similar to those of Burberry, there is a probability of 78% of similarity with BMW's brand properties.
In contrast there is a probability of 0% of similarity between the brand properties of Jeremy Clarkson and BMW.
Currently there is a 0% chance that the brand properties of John Simm and Peugeot would be considered similar. If they are to become more similar, the way people perceive Peugeot should focus more on adjectives such as “mysterious”, “funny”, “hardy”, “shameless”, “brilliant”, “ruthless”, “charming”, “giving”, “generous”, “fancy”, “intelligent”, “candid”, “considerate”, “imaginative” and “warm”. These are all brand properties the Peugeot brand is missing when compared with John Simm's.
On the other hand, by becoming more like the John Simm brand Peugeot risk losing some brand properties that on the face of it sounds desirable, such as “smart”, “efficient”, “reliable”, “positive”, “responsible”, “independent”, “friendly”, “active”, “capable”, “confident”, “safe” and “proud”.
In time we will know how successful they will be and of course let you know here.
OECD is now forecasting that the UK economy will enter a recession (story from Telegraph).
From a macro perspective I guess it is not counter-intuitive that growth comes to a halt when the world is engaged in a massive deleveraging operation; and at the same time impacted by the increasing uncertainty caused by the public finances in the Euro Zone.
But reading the forecast from the OECD I couldn’t help think back on the previous posts on this blog about how the change in online sentiment for some time as indicated that a recession was becoming more likely.
The 2nd of August I wrote a this post that showed that those with more influence in the debate on the UK economy was becoming more concerned about a possible recession than the public in general.
Since our influence-weighted analyses usually serves as leading indicators, this was a clear warning sign.
On the 1st of November I wrote this post in which I point out that the Onalytica Recession-Index for the UK economy had reached an all-time high (since April 2010).
In October 2011 the equal-weighted Recession-Index, which represents the sentiment of the board population, actually overtook the influence-weighted, which represents the sentiment of those with more influence in the debate on the UK Economy. The gap has widened in November.
This effectively means that the broad population as a whole are now more convinced that we are heading for a recession and are likely to reign in their spending further.
The Wall Street Journal has a story that economists thinks there is a reduced chance of recession in the U.S.
According to the story 52 economists surveyed in November put the chance of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months at 1-in-4, down from 1-in-3 two months ago.
I checked the Onalytica Recession-Index for the U.S. Economy to see if I could corroborate that. The chart is shown below.
Clearly it shows that there has been a declining anticipation of a recession in the U.S. economy since September.
Comparing the Onalytica Recession-Index for the U.S. economy to the U.K. economy is interesting. The chart below shows the Recession-Index for both economies.
Notice how they were very closely linked until May 2011. After that time the recession concerns were primarily with the U.S. economy. However, after August the outlook for the U.K. economy started to become worse while the perception for the U.S. economy started to improve.
Maybe what the U.K. can hope for is that the U.S. economy starts to grow to an extent that it can help the U.K. avoid recession.
See this article for more information on how these indices are constructed.
The state and trends of the sentiment in the economic debate can be highlighted using Onalytica Indexes.
Onalytica Indexes is a collection of indexes which tracks how online media report on a range of economic and business issues.
Over the years an increasing amount of research has been done into how media reporting can be used as indicators for the state of the economy. Other research has highlighted that the way economic news is reported can explain why consumer sentiment sometimes departs from economic fundamentals.
Onalytica Indexes shares the same basic ideas as these examples; that the level and change in the attention an issue receives in the public debate can increasingly be transformed into an indicator of economic trends.
In practice this is done by continuously collecting a large sample of what is published online about, in this case, the Eurozone economy. The Inflation-Index then measures the amount of articles that make references to what can be interpreted as inflationary issues. This includes the word “inflation” itself, references to increasing prices, that goods and services are becoming more expensive, and so on.
Figure 1 (below) shows the Onalytica Recession-Index for the UK Economy. Notice the sharp and accelerating increase since the low-point in July 2011.
The Recession-Index shown in Figure 1 uses equal weight for all voices. This weighting usually makes the results correlate well with what a popular poll would show.
The interpretation of the graph is thus that the population in general thinks that there is a higher chance of a recession in the UK Economy than they have thought at any time since April 2010.
Figure 2 (below) also shows the Recession- Index, but here all voices are weighted according to their calculated influence on the topic “UK Economy”. This means that national media, influential economists and similar are weighted more than, say a personal blog.
One way of interpreting Figure 2 is that among this group of stakeholders there has also been an increasing expectation (or fear) of a recession in the UK Economy since June, but the increase seems less dramatic.
Comparing Figure 1 and Figure 2 it is clear that “the average person” regards the chance of a recession as higher; both groups regard the chances as dramatically increased since July of 2011.
Clearly, if the government was hoping that consumers were going to feel more optimistic and start spending more, the data seems to be disappointing.
Another example of how the economic sentiment can be better understood using this type of analysis is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3 (below) shows the Onalytica Crisis-Index for the Euro Zone since April 2010. Clearly the view that a crisis is becoming more likely has been increasing since late April 2011 and although it seems to have dropped slightly in the last three weeks it will be very interesting to follow this index going forward.
A final example shows how combining indices can be very powerful.
Figure 4 (below) shows the Onalytica Recession-Index and Onalytica Inflation-Index for the US Economy since April 2010.
The Recession-Index is used as an indicator of the collective sentiment and indicates that the economy is likely to decline.
As Inflation is a key focus of a growing economy an increase in the Inflation-Index can be interpreted as an expectation of economic growth.
The idea is not that these Indexes should necessarily predict the underlying economic data, but show how the public in general (the equal weighted version) and those with more influence (the influence weighted version) perceive the economy.
I haven’t tested the indexes in Figure 4 against actual GDP or Inflation figures so I can’t comment on those correlations. I have tested them against the S&P500 Index and that looks impressive.
We have a couple of new positions in our software development team. Great opportunities for software engineers who want to work with “big data”.
Check them out here http://www.onalytica.com/careers/current-opportunities
Earlier this week I looked at the use of the word ‘recession’ in the context of the UK economy. Following the downgrade of the US debt I had a similar look at the debate on the US economy.
The first chart shows the share of online mentions that use the word ‘recession’ in relation to the US economy.
It is clear that there has been a substantial increase in the index since March and that the level in August has surpassed the previous peak of August last year.
But while the mentions of Ben Bernanke seemed to correlate well with the mentions of recession last year, the story is different this time. Notice how the focus on Bernanke has gone down in July and August when the focus on ‘recession’ has gone up.
The explanation might be that the problems this time around are more centred on political issues or the inability of politicians to deal with the issues.
The second chart seems to indicate that this time there is a better correlation between the mentions of ‘politicians’ and ‘recession’ than ‘Bernanke’ and ‘recession’.
Note: The charts are adjusted for the measured influence each “voice” has in the debate on the US economy. For example, compared with the New York Times (the most influential), FT weighs in with 59%, Guardian with 43% and the blog Seeking Alpha with 15%
My colleague Tom Flaye recently introduced me to the Recession index, an index developed by The Economist that tracks the mentions of the word ‘Recession’ in New York Times and Washington post.
It inspired me to take a look at the UK economy in InfluenceMonitor and it came up with an interesting graph.
The graph below shows the share of online articles and blog posts (not just the newspapers used in the original R-index) that mention the word ‘recession’ when they also mention the UK economy.
The blue line is where all articles and blog posts are weighted equal and the red line is where they are adjusted for their measured influence in the debate on the UK economy.
The green line (Gap) shows the percentage difference between the 2 lines.
Although the direction of both the blue and the red line would (according to the R-Index) indicate that the UK Economy is not on its way to a recession the sharp increase of the gap (green line) indicates that those with more influence in the debate on the UK economy have substantially increased their mentions of the R-word compared with other (and less influential) commentators.
Greece used to be a focal point in the debate on the global economy but in the last couple of week the attention has been dwarfed by the debate on the US debt ceiling.
It will be interesting to see if the attention returns to Greece once the US gets the debt ceiling sorted.
