London Mayoral Elections '08: About Opinion Tracker

Opinion Tracker is in live beta

If you've got ideas about how to improve it, develop it further or use it in an exciting new way, please contact us.

What is Opinion Tracker?

In short, Opinion Tracker monitors what people are thinking and saying around the internet. We (Delib) track conversations around the net (in forums, in blogs and in videos) and then analyse these to show what people are thinking and saying about specific issues - whether that's to do with an event like the Mayoral elections, an issue like Climate Change or a business's Corporate Reputation.

What are we tracking?

We specifically track four things relating to online conversations:

How do we do it?

Opinion Tracker works though a combination of technology and people power. Our technology allows us to spider the internet (across blogs, forums, social networks) and identify what people are saying about specific clusters of key words. Once this data is aggregated, our team of analysts then sample this data and process it to provide the end analysis and metrics.

Why do we do it?

We think there's a huge amount of public opinion out there that is going comparatively unheard. The internet is a big social space where people discuss all aspects of the world and their lives. In a context very different to the controlled environment of focus groups etc, it's possible to find out for real what people are thinking and talking about in their own environment e.g. in their blog, or in a forum. This means we can find out what 100's or 1000's of people are thinking, rather than 10 or so.

How can you use it?

The main use of Opinion Tracker is for intelligence gathering purposes, for either yourself or your work. By knowing what people are saying and thinking around the net, you are better informed to make decisions, input into articles or develop policies.