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Risky Social Intelligence at MicroStrategy?

Among the several leading topics of discussion on Twitter last week, analysts were focused on technology (#mstrworld, #Gartnerchat) and writers chose to go with what was on the news (#SOTU, #davos) while Apple remains at the top of the most talked-about brands.

MicroStrategy World (#mstrworld), an annual conference held by business-intelligence software developer MicroStrategy, generated excitement about Social Intelligence. This refers to a suite of new applications that collect data from, for example, Facebook (see the Wisdom app) and then analyse it in a highly structured and presentable format.

This is not a new idea, but the consensus is that MicroStrategy has implemented it more successfully than others who have tried, and at a time when many businesses are still looking for a way to chart a course through disruptive trends. A quote from CEO Michael Saylor’s keynote address catches some the confidence and persuasiveness behind the pitch:  ‘Scale fast…or fail fast’.

In all the enthusiasm it can feel like there is not enough risk-awareness. Take the following from Ventana Research CEO Mark Smith: ‘You can quickly access more than 30,000 individuals who have already provided permission and their Facebook tokens and analyse their friends’ fan information – this resource includes information from more than 5 million people in what MicroStrategy calls the Wisdom Network.’

One might be left to wonder how you get from 30,000 who have ‘already provided permission’, to 5 million, without raising privacy concerns regarding the extra 4,970,000 people who may not be aware of what their friends have chosen to share on the Wisdom Network. A further issue is how popular the current generation of social media sites will remain if there is too much talk of their effectively being customer-relationship-management databases.

You can download the latest Twitter Influencer Bulletin here.

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