DiscoverText Erfahrungen

Superb cloud-based software tool with powerful text analytics with social media integration.

Kommentare: It allowed me to conduct research that otherwise would not have been possible including both industry and academic projects.

Vorteile:

The ability for those from the social sciences to be able to import and/or retrieve social media data, including historical data from Twitter, and analyse the data in order to answer research questions. This is because other tools may require a computer science background. Consequently, DiscoverText has been used in answering important social science questions leading to peer reviewed outputs. Over the years I have seen many tools appear and slowly wither away, however, DiscoverText has stood the test of time and has been growing in popularity. DiscoverText is not limited to academic uses and has a number of neat uses in the commercial world. A useful feature applicable to the commercial domain is the ability to retrieve and/or import data from Twitter and identify influential Twitter users, with the additional ability to use machine learning to sift influential users into different groups. For example, a football club may be interested to find out whether influential users are fans of the club or whether it is opposition fans causing a storm. To the best of my knowledge, no other tool is capable of doing this with this level of accuracy.

Nachteile:

To be fair this is not a limitation of DiscoverText per se, as this is a restriction from Twitter, but there is a limit to how many units of tweets can be exported per day. This is not a major issue because there are enough features in DiscoverText that you may not necessarily need to export the data. This is particularly true with a recent integration with NodeXL which provides the ability to export directly to a format supported by NodeXL.

A much better way to scrape data than learning how to code an API

Kommentare: I'm a PhD candidate who straddles the Humanities and Social Sciences, so I use DiscoverText as a research tool.

Vorteile:

My review of DiscoverText is a bit limited because I'm really only using it for Twitter. That said, the features are incredible. I know a bit about coding, but the prospect of learning JSON to use Twitter's API was doable but daunting. When I came across DiscoverText I was so pleased to find a way to search, use, and categorize Twitter data that made sense and would save me A LOT of time. I didn't anticipate getting access to so much useful metadata that was easy to navigate and use, so I was pleasantly surprised. The built-in bucket and dataset features are great ways to organize the massive amount of Twitter data that can be collected. The ability to code the data with peers within DiscoverText is also super useful. I really can't exaggerate how many features DiscoverText has that I didn't think I would need but have used to improve the quality of my scholarship.

Nachteile:

The software has many features that I didn't find on my own, so the UI could be improved a bit. That said, the one-on-one tutorial that the founder provides helps mitigate this issue. The tutorial videos are helpful too! You'll just have to be prepared to set aside a few hours to really learn the program.

Great for analyzing social media data- just not offline documents.

Vorteile:

If you need to analyze data from social media and survey monkey- it's a great tool. You can search for content by keywords and the data drops in per the chosen frequency. It breaks down keywords and phrases to a list in order of use- where you can drill into each word or phrase to see where it's used and also toggle between different ways of displaying the results.

Nachteile:

I got the trial version to see if it would suit my purpose; I required a tool to analyze and cluster data from articles and other sources but just couldn't get it to work. If the trial period had been longer than 3 days ( I thought I signed up for 30- it's not very clear) I might have had time to figure it out. Better instructions would have helped. The instructions tell you what the features are, not why you need to use them which is not helpful for novice users.

Honestly,I can say DiscoverText makes analyzing social data not only easier, but also more enjoyable

Kommentare: It provides me more opportunities for working on my projects. Using it, I have access to many ways for doing research on social media data which have not before.

Vorteile:

First, it is so easy to learn and use. Moreover, the DiscoverText founders provided some helpful tutorials and educational videos which are so handy and helpful. This software allows users to makes several datasets of one project. This enables a researcher to work on multi-dimentions of a certain project needless to create different ones. Furthermore, you can create a sample of your data very easily by making a dataset. Its buckets are very interesting also. Additionally, you can make some clouds of data by using cloud explorer feature. Finally, Clustering option is great! it makes working on big data easy and shows the main trends in them quickly.

Nachteile:

As I can say, sometimes users may get confused by many links and pages. So, maybe finding what you want becomes difficult and you have to try some ways. Another con, in my point of view, is the obscurity of metadata meanings and algorithms. I cannot understand what some of the means and how they are calculated. Furthermore, I think some of metadata can be presented in some more useful ways. But at all, I should confess the metadata explorer is a great ability!

We have been using the software to study twitter conversations on immigration going back to 2013.

Kommentare: Easy data capture

Vorteile:

It's ability to capture tweets and now the capacity to export to NodeXL gives us two tools that we use together to study the content and structure of immigration conversations onTwitter.

Nachteile:

At times navigating the menus is counter-intuitive as is some of the terminology. Archives, buckets, datasets all kind of run into one another.

I've been using it for several years for analyzing customer data and Twitter data.

Kommentare: It's easy to create and code a dataset, and it is a particularly useful software to work with a team of coders in the same dataset.

Vorteile:

My favorite feature about this software is the fact that it allows multiple coders to easily work on a coding project. So if you have a lot of data, you can load the data on DiscoverText, set up some codes, and have several people work at the same time with coding. It will provide you with a report of what each coder did for how long etc, and also will allow you to export the results. You can also import data directly from Twitter using the search API. Coders can see the actual tweet when coding, which helps speed up the coding process. You can also export the data to NodeXL in order to generate social graph and calculate social network analysis metrics. For a fee, it is also possible to get access to GNIP and the entire historical archive of tweets. DiscoverText is not limited to Twitter, you can import data from other sources (including SurveyMonkey). As a researcher working with Twitter, for me the most valuable tool is the ability to easily create and code a Twitter dataset.

Nachteile:

Sometimes it will let two coders work on the same item if they access the item at the same time. Not allowing this could speed up the process.

It's a great tool to code big or even vast amounts of data in an efficient way. It work very well!

Vorteile:

It is easy to use, very intuitive, it gives you the basic options and functions in a clear design. Through the annotation tool, it is easy to amend the existing coding scheme and hint to anything problematic. This way you can also easily communicate with other users who you work on a project with. I really like the elegance of the program! It works very well for both rather simple (even binary) and truly elaborate and detailed coding schemes.

Nachteile:

the only real problem I encountered was that it can be annoying to jump back to an already coded item (for instance if you realized you made a mistake or want to add an annotation): if you use the "back" function it brings you to the previous numerical item which might not be the one you coded but one someone else is coding at the same time. Then you have to keep clicking "back" until your item reappears. This should be fixed. It is, however, a rare issue.

Excellent software and after sales support

Kommentare: Made my research possible, cant overstate how important it has been for me!

Vorteile:

Discovertext has enabled me, a non-IT specialist, to create, sort and purchase large scale twitter data sets for qualitative academic research. As a platform it is extremely user friendly and intuitive and took very little time for me to become comfortable with. It is also always accessible, I have logged in all over the world and have never had any problems with the platform. However, like all software platforms, the platform is only as good as the after sales support. Thankfully, Discovertext has the best post-sales service of any company I have worked with, they are always accessible and you always get a real human at the end of the phone who knows the software inside and out where else do you regularly get to speak to the founder of the software and the CEO of the company on a regular basis for after sales help. Thus, to me, you can't go wrong with discovertext and I have no complaints.

Discover Text for academic study

Kommentare: Discover text has been an incredible resource to explore crisis communication. The founder is particularly dedicated to his product and has held numerous one on one tutorial sessions for me.

Vorteile:

The advanced filtration tool allows you to sort of metadata tags like the geolocation of a tweet, which is extremely useful for academic work. This software is a great platform for an engineering academic like me to ease into the fields of text analytics and sentiment analysis.

Nachteile:

Like any software there is a learning curve for Discover text. Rely on the vast tutorial library to get through tasks., and sometimes the distinctions between data levels (buckets vs datasets) can be confusing.

DiscoverText Review

Vorteile:

The software is easy to use and navigate. Access to Twitter and Facebook is useful, but I found the ability to capture RSS feeds to be especially unique to the research I do.

Nachteile:

The main problem I run into, especially with Twitter data, is the number of units I can store. Upgrading to the top tier account is cost prohibitive, so I am left to work within the parameters of the software. That means when capturing Twitter data I can easily reach the cap in an hour or two. I'm always on the lookout for a software that can allow me to capture more data affordably.

DiscoverText is a great tool for collecting, sorting, and analyzing data

Vorteile:

DiscoverText is a great tool for collecting, sorting, and analyzing data. The platform allows for collection of data from various networks, such as Twitter. I mainly use the platform for coding and machine-classification of tweets. The import feature allows for integration between DiscoverText and other interfaces. For a client project, our data was collected from another toolkit and formatted in an Excel CSV. We were able to import the data into DiscoverText and use the platform to code and machine-classify the tweets. When working with multiple coders, the platform enables you to quickly and efficiently measure inter-coder reliability, which is helpful to determine validity of codes and which categories may need re-classification. I also like the export feature, which allows you to export coding/classification reports. The platform produces different visualizations (e.g. pie charts/graphs) of the coding breakdown, or you can export the entire report into another file (such as a CSV). Overall, I've had a great experience using DiscoverText for both in-class and client research projects. I will continue to use the platform for future research projects, especially the coding and machine-classification functionalities!

Nachteile:

When first using the software, it could be a little difficult for a beginning user to identify where all of the features are located and their specific purpose (e.g. exporting reports, buckets, duplicating a dataset). However, the training sessions, video tutorials, and manuals are very insightful and can help immensely with learning of the new features. As with any new platform, it just takes a bit of time to learn all of the features!

DiscoverText is unique--it has the best mix of human coding and machine learning I have found.

Kommentare: Combines data collection, human coding, machine coding and then easily exports to other software packages for additional analysis. Saves a huge amount of time.

Vorteile:

The dashboard allows our lab group to see multiple projects at once and keep track of the data feeds so we know how quickly we are collecting data on particular topics. It also has many useful functions like tracking topics over time, data cleaning support, analyzing social media meta-data and exporting data into other tools like NodeXL.

Nachteile:

Most everything is pretty intuitive and support is very fast. My biggest challenge was setting up hierarchical coding schemes, which can be challenging until you create a template that can be reused.

Used DiscoverText for academic research, both for social media and newspaper text analysis.

Vorteile:

Best features are the easy, very user friendly function for importing and coding social media data, the machine learning function that allows for automated coding of large datasets in a reliable manner and the validating function that ensures intercoder reliability.

Nachteile:

The occasional bug shows up when running search or coding analysis functions but in the five years we've been using DT these instances have been rare and always promptly addressed by the DT team.

An amazing software for social media & network analysis!

Kommentare: It is great to see how Stu supports academics and researchers, I was able to recommend the tool to colleagues in another University who were also given free and high-capacity licenses. We are hoping to pursue a research project on the markers of parochial empathy observed through Twitter data of users commenting on Syrian refugees in Turkey in the next 6 months using DiscoverText. DiscoverText bonding Temple University`s communication program with Bilkent University`s!

Vorteile:

It is incredibly easy to collect and clean data in different types and formats. I particularly worked with Twitter and newspaper data and found it particularly useful for picking out the pertinent content (e.g. hate and support discourses towards refugees within the context of Turkish users). I was able to download the data to use it with Gephi and come up with invigorating network illustrations. Also nice to be able to label the data on the software and create multiple archives.

Nachteile:

Exporting the data as an excel sheet :( I know I can do it but somehow I need to check the tutorials and my emails to figure out how to do it, could playing around with the design of the option help?

Useful software, very helpful team

Kommentare: I used DiscoverText after hearing about them on the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list. Stu and his team helped me put together a Twitter dataset that I'd been trying to put together through other methods—never without any success. This is a huge step forward for some of the research that I'm trying to do; I'm already getting some interest in the data and my analysis of it, and I couldn't have done it without DiscoverText!

Vorteile:

DiscoverText worked exactly as hoped, but the most impressive thing is how helpful and personal the DiscoverText team was with helping me with the particular request that I had.

Nachteile:

Figuring out how to download the raw data took a little bit of time. I can't blame DiscoverText for wanting me to stick with their interface and their tools, but it was still a little annoying that it took a while to get to what I needed.

Using Discover Text for a Simple Twitter Pull

Kommentare: I just needed a list of user names for a subsequent pull from the normal Twitter API. Sifter seemed to be the simplest way to accomplish this, and the DiscoverText account came free

Vorteile:

That I was eventually able to figure out how to download tweet text

Nachteile:

It was way more full featured than I needed, so it was a little hard to navigate.

Excellent tool for group coding, text cleaning, deduplication, and training ML models

Kommentare: I use DiscoverText as a way to introduce my students to qualitative coding at the unit level, data cleaning, and training an ML model. It's a great tool for students without programming experience to work with data. In my own work, I use it to clean, deduplicate, and code social media datasets. The data cleaning and search functions are very powerful. The ML training features are also quite powerful.

Vorteile:

The deduplication tools are amazing. Group coding is a snap. So is creating and testing training datasets.

Nachteile:

The interface can take a little while to get the hang of -- some of the options are a little hidden, but the support is VERY responsive and the tutorials are helpful. This is not software that you can just click your way through without reading a little of the documentation -- but what would you expect with a powerful tool?

Pretty intuitive, lots of features.

Vorteile:

I really like that it offers access to FB text analysis as well as other SNS all in one platform. In addition, the analysis tool, similar to NVivo is nice to have in-house. At the same time, the exporting features can be quite helpful. The platfom is generally easy to navigate and clear.

Nachteile:

The great thing about CH is that they have awesome user support, their base is so big that you can ping the community for help, without needing to go directly through someone at CH. Obviously, this will grow out over time, but in the interim there could be more quick and easy resources and support.

Great way to collect unique/interesting data; however, some technical background required.

Vorteile:

I think the greatest part about DiscoverText is all of the different types of social media data you're able to collect. I've only begun to scratch the surface of the usability of DiscoverText in my research. I also think it's wonderful that this software is "academic friendly" by offering discounted prices for faculty and students.

Nachteile:

If you've never conducted research with social media data, it can be daunting trying to figure out how to get going with the software. There are some "how to" videos to get you started (if you can find them), but I still found them to be above my technical understanding so I've had to pretty much stumble around to use the software correctly. Additionally, I contacted customer support with a question about one of the variables collected from tweets and never received a response.

Useful for data handling

Kommentare: We were interested in having access to historical data from twitter, but DiscoverText allowed us to perform some cool analyses on the spot. Thanks!

Vorteile:

The ability to create datasets / buckets is fairly useful, particularly when you work with thousands of records at the same time. Datasets are conveniently partitioned into 50,000 records, which is also very useful when downloading.

Nachteile:

It takes a few minutes to familiarize with the interface, but it's fairly intuitive afterwards.

Does the work of a team of people in less time

Vorteile:

Saves time and energy collecting and analyses survey data automatically, saves manpower poring over documents for details.

Nachteile:

You need to set aside some time to learn how to use it before you start your first project. Definite learning curve

Great tools, great service! Use this for study assignments all the time.

Vorteile:

DiscoverText is super useful when it comes to analyzing and categorizing large datasets. It has all the components one might need for the training of algorithms, made easy for use by a very clear interface.

Nachteile:

Without basic knowledge of data analysis and the handling and organizing of large datasets, the programme might not feel intuitive at first. However, it just takes time to get used to all features.

Analysis og Qualitative Methods

Vorteile:

I like the program especially which provides qualitative data easily. I used the program to analyze specific terms data in the Twitter and satisfied with the program.

Nachteile:

The program allows analyzing certain dates in Twitter such as 2016-2017. I think that it must be expanded for date.

I used DiscoverText in a research project to deal with twitter data corpus.

Vorteile:

1) Project or data corpus sharing can be very easy. Peers collaboration can be convenient. 2) Options for applying various algorithms. 3) Advanced searching options help me a lot. 4) Detailed meta data representation.

Nachteile:

The software can become a little bit slow during daytime. It can be caused by more usage from users during work time.

Tweets for research analysis

Vorteile:

I used DiscoverText to analyze tweets for a research paper, I liked the tools available such as extracting and searching for specific information, the ability to create different data and save them in a 'bucket' for further analysis, the cloud explorer, clustering and the exact duplicate tools. I also liked that you could download a dataset and analyze it using other tools, you could also download the reports and graphs generated. The support system was very effective, I received help within hours of asking.

Nachteile:

I was interested in sentiment analysis of the tweets and found it challenging to code sentiments from the software, to me it felt more manual process that I could do without the software.