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Rediff.com Launches Enhanced Data Journalism Tool to Provide Users with Real-Time News and Analytics to Track Views and Sentiments for the Upcoming India Elections!MUMBAI, India --(Business Wire)-- Rediff.com India Pvt. Ltd (NASDAQ: REDF), one of the premier news and online marketplaces in India, today announced the release of its 'Know Your Candidate' service that gives users instant access to essential ethics-related details about any candidate contesting the 2014 Lok Sabha election along with a meter that shows the unemployment rate percentage change. In May 2013, Rediff.com formally re-launched the 'Rediff Sentimeter', a data journalism tool that helps readers and visitors to its site make sense of Karnataka State Legislative Assembly Elections and help assess the outcome through a variety of interactive map-based tools that measure sentiment. In November 2013, the Company further enhanced this offering to include sentiment analysis based on political chatter in social media and online news platforms. The data journalism component measured political chatter on social media to analyze people's sentiments towards political parties and Rediff saw a spike in online traffic prior to the Delhi Assembly Elections. Now comes the latest innovation, 'Know Your Candidate', another tool to evaluate candidates and their respective histories and backgrounds, particularly looking at ethical behavior and past performance, co-mingling these phenomena, with historical and real-time news from over 30,000 news sources. Users can search for constituency candidates and compare their age, education and ethics, the latter, based on proprietary algorithms developed by Rediff after years of investment in its technology platforms. For example, based on the politician's educational qualifications, the gravity of criminal charges, if any, faced by her/him, and the jail term the candidate would get if the charges were upheld by a court, the 'Ethics Profile' ranks candidates in each constituency on a four-point scale: Excellent, Good, Passable and Controversial. Additionally, unemployment data available in the public domain has been analyzed for every constituency over two time periods to present the change to users as an indicator of development in their region. The change in unemploymnt for every constituency has been assigned one of four intervals - Declined a lot, Declined a little, Rose a little and Rose a lot. Given the sensitivities around economics and politics, unemployment has become one of the key variables that can influence a candidates' chance for election/re-election. A third addition to the offering includes a graphical snapshot which shows users how that particular constituency voted in the 2009 Lok Sabha election as well as the most recent state Assembly election. Users can view these new tools and features at http://labs.rediff.com/loksabha-elections-2014/. Chief Election Commissioner V S Sampath announced the schedule for the 2014 general election on March 5. The election will be held in nine phases on April 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 24, 30 and May 7 and 12. Counting will be held on May 16. Users can see when their respective constituencies go to pool at http://www.rediff.com/news/special/ls-election-special-find-out-when-your-constituency-goes-to-poll/20140311.htm. Rediff has a series of data journalism and analytics tools that it intends to roll-out over the coming year, focused on politics, sports (cricket in particular), entertainment and business. These new features will combine the power of social media, news media and technology, leveraging algorithms developed by Rediff's developers that will help shape and report on key trends in India as well as predictive analysis tools that can be used in a variety of everyday life scenarios, such as elections, online shopping, celebrity tracking (what's hot, what's not and what's trending), among others.
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