Facebook and Twitter have become the dominant sources when it comes to listening to the user feedback in social media. However, another popular channel to exchange the views and experiences on the Internet is often somewhat forgotten. Web forums are extensively used for product feedback and sharing tips about offerings. Web forums can thus provide a valuable insight to the end-user dialogue - often lost in the other social media channels.

Discussion forums are one of the oldest types of sources on the web. They originate from the bulletin boards which used to shape and drive the need for the global web.

Web forums are still a very popular medium for conversations on the Internet. Many prefer it to the more modern social media due to several factors:

(1) Better structure – I know what is the topic of discussion and I know in which communities I can find other people interested in the same area;

(2) Anonymity – I don’t have to disclose all my friendships and family ties when I raise...

Does social media monitoring relate to news monitoring? Certainly, and parts of social media resemble more and more news media, with an integrated editorial process and news elements rather than simply expressing opinions. Professional bloggers, including industry experts, scientists, freelance journalists or even enterprises with dedicated full-time bloggers are using the blogosphere to compete with more traditional media about breaking news and coverage of new product releases and other interesting events.

Last year, the tech blog Gizmodo was the first to release photos of the then-unseen iPhone 4. They reported on someone who had found a prototype lost by an Apple employee in an area beer garden in San Francisco. This story was immediately picked up by media all over the world.

A blog publishing posts like that has a different impact and reach than when a teenager writes a blog post stating that his new iPhone 4 is cool. When monitoring social media, one needs to separate these two types of blogs....

Several EU projects have been initiated lately on aggregating, analyzing and reusing social media content. Universities and researchers all across Europe study how social media can be used in the future:

 



  The Arcomem is looking into how social media mining can enrich archives and structured preservation.

 



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