Searching blog trends

There's finally an alternative to Nielsen's Blogpulse.  Not that there's anything wrong with Blogpulse - it's a handy, free tool for searching trends in the blogosphere.  And there have always been other ways to get at the information (without paying for it) - Google blog search or Technorati in particular.  But Blogpulse delivers a simple results graphic with rudimentary tools for controlling date range and drilling down into results.

Now from Belgian brand monitoring firm Attentio comes Trendpedia - a tool to search blog trends with a bit of zeitgeist thrown in as well.  (Now available out of beta.)

I ran a quick search on the first topic that came to mind after a long three-day weekend (it was Patriots Day, for those of you not in MA, ME, or WI - commemorating the ride of Paul Revere in 1775).  The topic just happened to be the drama around the New York Yankees young pitching staff. 

The results from Blogpulse vs. Trendpedia:

(I admit that the first search I ran was for Joba, "Ian Hughes," and "Phil Kennedy."  Oops.)

From what I can tell, it looks like Blogpulse is on autopilot - a "2005 year in review" feature lives on,  the copyright at bottom is 2006, and latest news is from April 2007.  Maybe a tell-tale sign of the revenue generation potential from a free blog trend search engine...?

Comments

[MichelleBB]

Pete,
Very interesting. Just did a search on "New Balance", Nike and Reebok; the range of posts that came back was quite interesting...everything from "made in the USA" (NB) to "new iPod trainer nicknamed iProd" (Nike).

My question to you: how many consumer companies really mine this information and leverage insight to impact how they message to customers? Is there anyone at any of these companies regularly trolling the blogosphere?

[Peter Kim]

Hi Michelle,
I think it's a small but growing number companies that are systematically "listening" to conversations for insight. The brand monitoring business seems to be better understood by today's buyers and growing - but it's still small. I see a typical pattern - companies start small and free, then get to a point where they need professional help. For example, see this post from David Churbuck at Lenovo: http://www.churbuck.com/wordpress/?p=1655 . The question for the vendors is, how many companies will get to that point, how fast.

[Chris Reed]

From a London perspective there are a lot of decent companies who are doing good online analysis and research. And as a top 10 UK PR agency, I've reviewed a lot of them to make recommendations to our clients as to who they should use. For some, it's a simple case of google alerts and maybe Yahoo Pipes. For others, the AI-based systems are right.

But there is still an ongoing argument as to how to present the findings of these sorts of results - clients understand press cuttings, or audience figures, but many simply can't yet comprehend the importance of 1000 tweets, or 10 blog posts. So there's an education job to do there even to demonstrate that such analysis could be useful.

In the meantime, though, it helps me and my colleagues identify the most influential blogs and bloggers on particular subjects - if we dont' already know them.

For me, the thing with these analysis agencies boils down to two things: get the automated side as right (in terms of keywords) as you can, but don't underestimate the need for real people to do some further analysis.

Will McInnes (social media agency head) - sums it up well: "Machines are too dumb. People are too slow."

I wish I'd come up with that line myself - the answer is bound to be a combination of both.

[Peter Kim]

Chris - great points and you've got me thinking. Love the quote on machines/people. Maybe the ultimate solution is that a company doesn't need a brand monitoring tool, because they're participating effectively in social media, along with their agency. Using a tool for aggregation and analysis becomes moot because they're already in the flow of discussion, listening and responding. (It's similar to what I've proposed in my recent "The Connected Agency" Forrester report.) But is that future feasible anytime in the foreseeable future? Probably not...