says organizes billions of social media conversations into more than 70 actionable segments revealing the personalities, attitudes, and interests of communities down to the block level. (Anyone can get a link to download a data sample by entering their work email address on the website. Foust says its customers, including Ford, access the same information.)
“With this dataset, we connect the social emotions of a neighborhood with the demographics,” Foust continues. “One of the categories is Bookish. Communities that talk a lot about books tend to be well-educated, diverse, and higher income. When people live in old buildings, we found, they talk more about literature and history, and they do it most often in spring and fall. The place that you live changes what you think and talk about.”
I glanced through the taxonomy associated with the new dataset. Broken up into sub-segments that include hobbies and interests, lifestyles, relationships, food and drink, entertainment, emotional, culture, beliefs, appearance-oriented, attitudes, and activity, I picked a category that seemed like it might match me: green thumb.
According to Spatial.ai’s analysis, green thumb people are into talking about their gardens and methods of cultivating online—and there are a fair number in Detroit. They also tend to skew a bit older, wealthier, and white or Asian, but usually live in diverse neighborhoods. They’re well-educated and tend to work in real estate or professional services, are more common in cities than rural areas, and veer toward home ownership. They’re split down the middle politically.
I looked at another popular category called connected motherhood. In Spatial.ai’s taxonomy, connected moms prioritize sharing their child-rearing experiences and connecting with other parents. They also have households that skew younger, household incomes that approach six figures, and live in predominantly white neighborhoods. Connected moms have slightly higher education levels, and many work in manufacturing and healthcare. They also tend to live in areas that are politically conservative.
With 79 percent of Americans online using social media, Spatial.ai believes there is a vast amount of untapped data that can be analyzed to create snapshots of community personalities. Foust says that in 2019, Spatial.ai will add five people to its 10-person team and will begin studying data from Canada and South America. A second dataset, which he declined to describe, will be released later this year.
