5 big data sources for strategic sentiment analysis

Somewhere, someone is tweeting "[This airline] sucks the big one!" In the past, they would have been ignored. These days many airlines respond with sympathy ("We're so sorry you're having a rough trip -- please DM us, so we can resolve it") or send an invitation to call an 800-number (where you can wait on hold forever). A tool called sentiment analysis, or the mathematical categorization of statements' negative or positive connotations, gives companies powerful ways to analyze aggregate language data across all sorts of communications, not only tweets. Here are five of the most valuable sentiment sources to tap.