Not really pointless. The "value" of this may be questionable though, at this point in time.
As the web and bogosphere has grown exponentially in influence, there has been great interest in determining if real life outcomes can be affected by influential opinions posted on blogs -- and then re-created in numerous other places to mimick majority viewpoints.
There are numerous companies invloved in this research-like activity which can be tailored for marketing, business intelligence financial trading, political campaign managment uses (for example, Umbria of Denver, CO was just sold to JD Power).
They use primarily data visualization tools (like those used now by lawyers engaged in electronic data discovery) --
These are similar to the software tools used by intelligence services to monitor, track, analyze, for example, wireless (web/phone) transmissions and discussions originating in the US, and destined for overseas delivery in places like, say, Iran.
re: #21 zombie
Not really pointless. The "value" of this may be questionable though, at this point in time.
As the web and bogosphere has grown exponentially in influence, there has been great interest in determining if real life outcomes can be affected by influential opinions posted on blogs -- and then re-created in numerous other places to mimick majority viewpoints.
There are numerous companies invloved in this research-like activity which can be tailored for marketing, business intelligence financial trading, political campaign managment uses (for example, Umbria of Denver, CO was just sold to JD Power).
They use primarily data visualization tools (like those used now by lawyers engaged in electronic data discovery) --
These are similar to the software tools used by intelligence services to monitor, track, analyze, for example, wireless (web/phone) transmissions and discussions originating in the US, and destined for overseas delivery in places like, say, Iran.
.