Topsy’s sentiment score is computed based on analysis of the full Twitter Firehose — which includes more than 450m tweets every day — and is tailored to the informal and abbreviated language that is often found in tweets and social media in general.

In addition, Topsy has added a dashboard interface that provides a quick snapshot of relevant social metrics such as exact tweet counts for any term, sentiment scores, and mentions over time

“To fully understand the social conversation around a particular topic, it’s essential to take both quantitative and qualitative measures into account,” says Jamie de Guerre, SVP of product and marketing at Topsy. “With today’s updates, we’re offering a much deeper integration of search and analytics so our users can derive real insights from the data.”