Ever Wish You Could Decipher Social-Media Snark? So Does the Secret Service. The Secret Service is looking for new social-media monitoring tools, to among other things, help determine sarcasm.
By Nina Zipkin
In the age of constant social media use, we all know that nuance can get lost in a sea of tweets and texts, leading to missed social cues, poorly received jokes and perhaps an over-reliance on the friendly exclamation point. Apparently no one is immune, not even one of the oldest law-enforcement agency's agencies in the country -- the U.S. Secret Service.
As spotted by the Washington Post, the Secret Service is in the market for a new suite of social-media analytics software and will be taking proposals until 5:00 p.m. on June 9th. The Post reports that the agency has been using the Federal Emergency Management Agency's analytics tools and now wants a dedicated system of its own.
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The Secret Service wants the new monitoring tools to provide real-time analysis, and data visualization like heat maps, find influencers, access Twitter histories, search in different languages and be compatible with Internet Explorer 8 (yes, Internet Explorer 8). On the more subjective side of things, the agency wants the tools to deliver "sentiment analysis" and an "ability to detect sarcasm and false positives" -- two important features for an agency who, in addition to riding in style with the president and VP, is tasked with investigating fraud.
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