Many companies are turning to social-media sites to gauge the success of a new product and service. The latest activity on Facebook, Twitter, and countless other sites can reveal the public's current mood toward a new film, gadget, or celebrity, and analytics services are springing up to help companies keep track.
Could we use social media sites to measure enemy morale? Or the attitudes of any particular population?
While it is obviously worthless for Afghanistan where there is no critical mass of people online to say it is representative of the population, wouldn't it be good to be able to gauge the feelings of people toward the enemy or our forces, or monitor reactions to collateral damage in air strikes?
But on the other hand, given the online presence of jihadis, wouldn't it be useful and possible to monitor their morale in close to real time? Could an upsurge in confidence scoring on such sites indicate hopes among a sub-set of users that a coming attack onn us is imminent?
Actually, I kind of assume we are already doing something like this--or exactly like it.
