If the end of the last decade was all about the massive growth in the social Web, the beginning of this one will witness considerable emphasis on social Web analytics... the application of search, indexing, semantic analysis and business intelligence technologies to the task of identifying, tracking, listening to and participating in the distributed conversations about a particular brand, product or issue.
It's a busy market, but with Visible Technologies pinning down $22m in C series funding this week, things are starting to get serious.
Brian Solis discusses the social network advertising and marketing outlook for 2010 this week, and Michael Litman has been good enough to share a presentation by Charlene Li with us about the future of social networks. Unfortunately, Charlene's presentation stops short of discussing the need for consumer facing (high mention volume) brands to adopt analytics, although it does reference the associated redesign of organisational workflow that's demanded. Read more