WebProNews

Umbria Communications will update its Buzz Report product next week with additional features.

Some opinions have influence, but widely held similar opinions have greater value to marketers. Umbria plans to tweak its Buzz Report to better assess the opinions and information it gathers from blogs, forums, and chat rooms.

The company collects that unsolicited information based on client requirements. One firm may want to know more about how a brand is perceived, while another wants to determine the features its target market wants from a given product.

Umbria says in a statement that it constantly scans and analyzes over 11 million blogs and forums. With the Buzz Report update, Umbria claims it will improve reports on demographic segmentation, and that it can discern characteristics of a speaker based on speech patterns.

Another improvement will see the technology do a better job of filtering blog spam (do we call this "blam" now?) Auto-generated blogs based on keywords, or blog posts unrelated to the topic of discussion, can skew reports if not filtered.

"The online world is full of individuals talking about their lives and how they intersect with brands, companies and topics of interest. Never before have companies been able to tap into these unbiased conversations to truly understand what is important to those who enjoy their products," said Umbria CEO Howard Kaushansky in a statement.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.