Social media should not be treated as a scattershot approach, it's a dedicated way to empower your P1 consumers to become brand advocates by listening and super serving their needs. Social media is a way to offer personalized, customized service.

Companies just need to be willing to spend the money to make it happen. Here's a breakdown of putting an ad in Times Square vs tossing some money at a social media customer service campaign:

http://www.cyberbuzz.com/2009/11/05/times-squar...

Thanks so much for the post and the thorough review. A few things of note:

1) You're absolutely right that technology being what it is, sentiment analysis will always, always require a human element. Most importantly, the subjective nature of what's “good” or “bad” in light of your business goals requires a person to really evaluate.

2) Regarding web analytics, we're working harder to connect all those dots and provide deeper data through things like our WebTrends web analytics integration, in addition to other upcoming partnerships and alliances with web-driven data. Sites like Compete.com are part of the picture too.

3) Regarding Facebook and other social networks, at this writing, there is no monitoring tool that can get into private data. It's part of FB's terms of service for their users that they have an expectation that their personal information and posts remain private, and crawlers of any stripe can't get there for that reason. Until and unless FB makes individual status updates public (which personally I don't think is likely), searches and tracking will be limited to public areas like Group discussions, which we cover. Likewise with sites like Ning; members join with the expectation that they can control access to their information, and unless the structure of those kinds of social networks changes, it's not a matter of coverage but access to information.

Thanks, also, for writing such a clear explanation of the availability of historic results within the pricing structure. That's an important distinction, and I'm thrilled that you pointed it out.

Really appreciate your thorough feedback and all of your thoughts about usability, data coverage, and the like. You can bet we're capturing this kind of feedback all the time to improve and enhance the platform for our users.

Thanks again, and please keep the feedback coming!

Amber Naslund
Director of Community, Radian6
@ambercadabra | amber@radian6.com

I love the death match analogy! Reminds me of the TechCrunch posting on SM2 – “like google analytics on steriods”.

Great to see people writing and even comparing use to Radian6. Until a few months ago we were a boot-strapped start up winning customers by “wanting it more”. Our first customers were bought with blood, sweat, and tears. We were the David, Radian6 the well-funded Goliath.

As most people likely know by now, that hard work paid off and we are now part of a great company called Alterian (thanks David and Bob!). We have been working on doubling our technology team by year end, hired professional data center people, a UI design specialist, a DBA, we are upgrading the data center hardware and a ton of other investments. The Alterian guys are very serious about social media.

Your feedback is great, but not surprising. Our front end was designed by developers and has needed the face lift we are working on.

Social media monitoring industry is just finishing up round 1 of the Death Match. I expect we are going to some awesome advancements from us and the other leaders in the next few years.

Aaron
Founder, Techrigy
VP, Social Media, Alterian

Enjoyed reading your detailed review. Thanks for the kind words and feedback on our product!

I've passed your thoughts on to the rest of our UX team. We are dedicated to maintaining the ease of use in our product and we look forward to any future ideas you have.

Cheers,

Brian Dunphy
User Experience Team Lead | Radian6
@BrianDunphy on Twitter