The origin of Temetic Research came about after an exhaustive review of the Online Social Intelligence marketplace. It became clearly evident that the services being offered were based upon a lack of valid measures. The entire industry remains absent a substantial analytical discipline. It is completely devoid of a foundational science. The digital dashboards currently being peddled by 99% of “Social Listening” and “Social Media Monitoring” firms are actually derived of legacy measures first used by search engines based on “eyeballs” or generalized popularity scores. For business to gain a comprehensive understanding of the explosive growth of the social world online, popularity-based scores, such as; awareness, buzz, and general sentiment fall consistently short. As a result, we started Temetic Research and developed Digital Sociology to fill this critical knowledge gap.

Online Socializing can be defined as derived of a hierarchy of multi-dimensional levels (strength, susceptibility, trust, time + many more). Digital Sociology is the disciplined study of the levels that comprise this hierarchy. The dynamism of online social interaction is perpetual and robust. The science focused upon defining this dynamism must reflect this environment. The hierarchies of digital dialogue are reverberating systems within which, dependent upon the histories of the conversational groupings and the conversational channels for which they occupy, a virulent message may or may not evolve, may or may not sustain mindshare, may or may not affect perceptions, and may or may not impact purchase behaviors. The factors of evolution, mindshare, perceptions, and behaviors will not be found outside of Temetic Research. Without these social comprehension features, common buzz and general sentiment measures will continue to fail at defining the expanding online social ecosystem.

Digital Sociology can be properly summarized as a comprehensive reduction process of the complex online social system. This is followed by a second stage synthesis from which actionable (usable) market intelligence is derived. The reductive effort is the scientific practice through which the online social environment is broken down into its constituent processes and parts. Upon identifying, defining, and understanding the elemental components of digital-based socializing, the pieces can be put back together (synthesized) and their newly understood characteristics are used to explain the emergent properties of the social system being explored. This information feeds unprecedented strategies and tactics. To serve as a single example among many, prior to Digital Sociology there was no way to identify attributes of Cooperative Behaviors in online dynamic conversations - to the current Industry it remains as non-differientiated "buzz".