Business and Marketing

The Affinities function forms profiles using what other people post about targets, as well as what they post themselves.

Crimson Hexagon today added the Affinities tool to its ForSight suite of social media analytics. The program, which had been in beta test since last fall, calls upon social data compiled by the company in its seven years of existence to reveal the interests of customers and target markets.

A point of difference claimed by Crimson Hexagon over similar tools is that Affinities draws upon what other people post about targeted prospects in addition to what they post about themselves. “Even if someone is not really engaged in social media, even if they've never tweeted, we can create a social profile by how they are mentioned by others,” says SVP of Product Errol Apostolopoulos. “With a library of more than 600 billion Twitter posts and a full set of Tumblr data, we feel like we have the broadest coverage to tell the story.”

In a rundown of a beta test on Crimson Hexagon's website attempting to find the most efficient way for a movie studio to buy Facebook fans for a new release, the company claimed 31% superiority in CTR for Affinities versus Facebook's own Audience Insights tool.

Business Breaking News: 10 Strange (But Successfully Funded) Kickstarter Products

If you've got a great product idea but lack the resources to make it happen, Kickstarter and other similar crowdfunding websites are a great way to turn your dreams into reality.

Not every Kickstarter project winds up being funded, but in the past, some weird campaigns have found success — even joke campaigns, like the infamous potato salad Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $55,000. Some products are ingenious, some are fascinating and others are so strange we're not even sure why anyone would back them.

These 10 products may seem odd, but they've all come to life thanks to the Kickstarter community:

Commodity Online News: Maize prices gain on firm spot demand amid short covering