Watching Social Networks for Clues about Promotions

Before people began making their lives public on social networks, retailers had to figure out their likes more indirectly. Companies like Oracle and Siebel provided huge database programs that analyzed individual sales and consumer demographics in search of patterns that might lead to more sales—say, by targeting groups of customers who might be likely to respond to special offers. But the retailers couldn’t directly observe the connections between individual consumers, or watch them chat online with each other about products.

CalmSea, a company founded in 2009 by database industry veterans, adds consumers’ social-network activity to the mix of what retailers can analyze. Moreover, the company takes advantage of cheap large-scale database computing to crunch numbers nearly in real time, and to experiment on the fly with new analysis methods that would have required serious database retooling in the past. Clients include the sneaker company Puma and Tobi.com, an online clothing retailer.