People have always had an interest in what other people think, or what opinion they hold. Since the inception of the internet, increasing numbers of people are using websites and social media platform for expressing their opinion. Due to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc., it has become feasible to analyze and extract the public opinion on a certain topic, news story, product, or brand.

Opinions that are mined from such services can be valuable. Data mined from these sources can be analyzed and presented accordingly to easily identify the online mood (positive, negative or neutral). This allows individuals or business to be proactive as opposed to reactive when a negative conversational thread is emerging. Alternatively, positive sentiments can be leveraged to identify product advocates as well to shape the business strategy by seeing the parts of the strategy that are working.