infograph | The Viral Blog

With the extension of the US debt ceiling issue until May 2013, in conjunction with investors optimistic feelings toward the U.S. and Chinese markets, oil demand and prices continue to remain at a high point. The recent stability of the Euro-zone economy has also contributed to these high values, according to leading oil industry experts[1].

The US Energy Agency dropped West Texas Intermediate and adopted North Sea Brent Crude as the benchmark for oil forecasting[2], which just reached a 3 month price peak[3]. The peak was seen not only in Brent oils trading price, but also in the amount of its online mentions across various public social media channels.

Using advanced data mining programs, Viral Technologies analyzed about 100,000 online mentions in the last three months related to crude oil, its future prices, risks and other related political decisions that were posted online.

While the vast majority of posts queried in English came from the United States, other countries like China, India, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates also contributed heavily to social media mentions velocity tracking. Overall, public mentions related to oil were spread across no less than 157 countries, showing the global implications and importance of the topic.

Viral Technologies will continue expanding our proprietary algorithms that follow developments in the global oil market. Combined with our human intelligence foreshadowing techniques, we continue to monitor global capital markets for our financial and institutional trading partners.

[1] Oil and Gas Journal, Sam Fletcher; Published: Feb 4, 2013

[2] CNBC Business News, Reuters; Published: Dec 7, 2012

[3] Oil-Price. net

The real estate market in the United States has been at an all time low over the past few years. Recently, there have been subtle signs of recovery as we round the corner into the new year of 2013. Viral Technologies analyzed millions of conversations which happened over social media outlets during the past 3 months. From these conversations, Viral Technologies extracted only the posts containing verbage related to the buying or selling of a house or home and compared the findings.

72% of social media users were discussing the purchase of a house and 38% were discussing the sale of a house.

Of the 72% discussing the purchase of a house 86% were of a negative tone – only 14% were of a positive tone. Most of the negative sentiment was from the hassle of buying a new house; however a good amount was because of the higher prices of housing than we have seen in previous years.

Of the 38% discussing the sale of a house 63% were of a positive tone and only 37% were of a negative tone. Surprisingly there was more positive sentiment regarding the selling of a house than negative sentiment. This was primarily coming from real estate agents and home owners who were able to sell their house at a decent price, and much higher than expected from previous years.

The graphs below show a 3 month trend line regarding social media mentions of both the buying and selling of a house or home.

These findings fall closely in line with the actual state of the housing market as reported by various agencies. Fiserv reported that U.S. home prices have increased by 1.2 percent since the summer of 2011. Home prices have been reported to be up in more than half the 384 metro-area markets in the second quarter of 2012. While some financial analysts remain skeptical regarding the real estate market’s recovery, many have been relieved that the worst may be behind us.

Viral Technologies provides unique, geo political and financial based web subscription feeds and reporting.

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