Eye of the Beholder

One of the things we do at 365 Media is real-time sentiment analysis of commentary-based content. We're due to launch a very powerful social media monitoring system in the next few months, so we're facing these challenges right now. Maybe that's a secret.

Here's the challenge - in an expressed sentiment, can you truly isolate an objective sentiment? Let's say in a review a restaurant critic says that the portions are small - is that good or bad? I have an "issue" with the size of some portions in restaurants, we really don't need a 1,200 calorie starter. I hear about a restaurant with small portions, I think it must be high quality. However, I remember a work colleague of mine complaining that the portions were small at a restaurant near our office (they weren't, neither was he).

To rate the sentiment of a comment, we have to have a perspective. The solution in the case of any gray area for a software program is lots of perspectives and pick the average. And so we come back to the chess player in the box.