Text Mining for Predictive Modeling

Last week a colleague of mine involved in a product evaluation of text mining tools for predictive modeling began asking questions about the "proper" criteria for selection and about the necessary features for a successful product. As the conversation turned into a request for a write up I remembered an article that I wrote a while ago entitled The Next Wave in Customer Analytics for DM Review where I talked about what it takes to use text effectively for production quality predictive models.