Facebook introduces sentiment analysis for testing

Anybody with a Facebook brand page has probably seen the new Page Insights pop up in their left column.  Well they seem to be getting a further upgrade into the sort of hit-or-miss world of sentiment analysis.

They may not be so accurate at times; but click on the "engaged users" metric and you'll see a number of users who commented negatively on your post.   ClickZ News has confirmed that this is only a test from an email they received when asking for comment.

“What you’re seeing on that blog is a test – Facebook is constantly running tests to improve the way the site runs and functions, but we don’t have anything else to share at this time.”

Contradictory to what David Baser, product manager of Facebook told ClickZ News in October (“When we’ve researched this, we have found the vast, vast majority of content is positive. So we don’t believe today there is any need for us to get into sentiment analysis products.”), this seems to be an alternative direction they are taking.

It may not be a dis-like button; but it's a step in the direction that people may not be positive about everything.

Source: ClickZ