Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Tracy Chu

Ioannis Pavlidis

Disclosed are methods for identifying topical experts from a seed set of experts by identifying 'second tier' influencers for the topic. New concepts detected among a pool of experts and second tier influencers are monitored among the general population and their significance evaluated. Reports may be generated for these detected trends. Trends in social media for a concept represented in a taxonomy may be detected by monitoring content for descendent nodes for the concept. Correlations between social media activity with respect to the concept and sales of products corresponding to the concept may be made and sales predicted for the same or different products that correspond to descendants of the concept in the taxonomy.

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Mountain View, CA, United States of America

Tracy Chu