Signs Of The Semantic Web Surface In Salesforce.com Radian6

The Semantic Web’s promise is about developing common frameworks that allows data to be shared and reused across applications and platforms. At its heart comes the understanding that applications are loosely coupled. The apps connect with APIs that form a sort of glue. The data moves between these apps, which is increasingly analyzed to discover its meaning and value.

You can see this in action to some extent with Salesforce.com Radian 6 and its “insights” technology for measuring social data from online conversations in multiple languages.

The new capability comes through the partnerships with eight companies. Klout, OpenAmplify and OpenCalais are now joined in the ecosystem by Clarabridge for text sentiment analysis, Lymbix for emotion and tone classification, PeekAnalytics for social audience measurement, Solariat for social intention analysis, and new capabilities from OpenAmplify for customer service insights.

Here’s an example of the Clarabridge text analysis:

The new feature capabilities include: sentiment analysis; natural language processing; online influence; demographic analysis and analytics through what Salesforce.com calls intelligence dashboards.

It allows for people to discover the depth of conversation about a particular product or service. For example, it can show what people are saying online about printers and then drilling down further to discover particular customer service issues:

Salesforce Radian 6 shows the value that comes with loosely coupled environments. It has developed an ecosystem that relies on APIs to connect the different pieces. The result is an example of what we can learn about the semantics of what people are saying through text analysis and other means.

Competitors to Salesforce.com Radian 6 include Sysomos, Lithium and Converseon.