Scout Labs

Scout Labs (discussed on TechCrunch) is a new entrant in the social media analysis space. While they don't have much to show yet on their website other than a short video (I never know why such things are called 'demos'), from what they do show it seems that they are a clear competitor for the usual crowd (BuzzMetrics, Umbria, Cymfony) and also plan to cover the actionable results of monitoring - managing the process of responding to online content by posting comments etc. This later function puts them in competition with Visible Technologies.

Comments

[Jennifer Zeszut]

Hi Matt. We read your blog all the time, so it's quite an honor to be mentioned on it! Scout Labs certainly wants companies be able to TUNE IN to the voice of the customer out across the Internet -- what they are loving, hating, wanting, wishing for from products and brands in real-time. Obviously, this is where most of the really hard technical work comes in -- indexing human expression, natural language processing, algorithms, text and data mining, data visualizations, etc. But our customers are marketers and product managers and business executives who need to make decisions -- not measure things. They told us from the very beginning that data is not an end to itself. The real "so what" of all this is for a company to be able to build relationships with customers (on a large scale) and to build better products. So for us, it was important to build the JUMP IN components of the product as well as the collaborative pieces that facilitate idea sharing and product and marketing innovation.

I hope you are interested in being part of the private beta, as we look forward to your thoughts. Thanks again and good to (virtually) meet you.

--Jenny and the Scout Labs team

[Blake Cahill]

Matt:

Appreciate the mention and highlighting of engagement and participation. It is key for brands to do more than just monitor. Engaging shows that a company is listening and hopefully transforming based on customer conversations. Looking forward to seeing you at ICWSM.

Blake
www.visibletechnologies.com