Startup company claims to measure not only how often a story is read, but its quality

Story Data Analysis 2/3 from Thoora on Vimeo.

Apparently a Toronto startup company, backed in part by Rogers Communications, has come up with a way to gauge audience sentiment that will assist editorial decision-making. A story on Poynter Online profiled Thoora, software that monitors more than 100 attributes and allows ranking not only by popularity, but by quality.

The company said the data could be used to figure out, for example, where to position an article on a page (aiding internal data from Web logs and analytics), how to apportion resources to cover a developing story or even how to follow up on offshoots that you might not have considered. It could help a news organization determine where its individual story ranks against competitors covering the same thing.

CEO Mike Lee said this is the first time that a tool has approached audience sentiment for news at the story level rather than the topic level...."We hope to not just be a quantity aggregator but to actually drive quality to the surface," Lee said.

[thanks for the tip to Kim Pittaway]